A Son of Fire
by benignmilitancy
Summary: Neo's a wanted man. Destroying Smith may have ended the war, but assimilating the virus kills his body and casts him from the Source as an exile. Haunted by visions of destruction and a corrupted RSI, he seeks the Oracle's help. Soon a power struggle emerges in the real world, threatening the delicate truce. And the Merovingian? Well, some men just want to watch the Matrix burn.
1. Chapter 1

_A Son of Fire_

 **I.**

* * *

"Why, Mr. Anderson?"

He had his reasons. That they would fall on deaf ears was another inevitability etched into the system.

"Why? Why do you do it?"

For Zion.

"Why get up?"

For the Matrix.

"Why keep fighting?"

For Trinity. His most precious reason _._ He'd have given her his eyes if he could, to offer her another chance to see that beautiful glimpse of sun.

Smith trudged toward him in the downpour, his every line of code radiating hatred and contempt. "Do you believe you're fighting for something, for more than your survival? Can you tell me what it is, do you even _know?_ Is it freedom," he asked mockingly, taking a stab in the dark, "or truth? Perhaps peace? Could it be for love?"

With a shake of his head he dismissed them all. "Illusions, Mr. Anderson, vagaries of perception. Temporary constructs of a feeble human intellect trying desperately to justify an existence that is without meaning or purpose, and all of them artificial as the Matrix itself, although… " A small sneer worked its way across his mouth. "Only a human mind could invent something as insipid as _love_."

Reduced to his hands and knees, Neo crawled away with an infant's slow frailty.

The virus stood before him caked in mud and filth, raving mad. "You must be able to see it, Mr. Anderson, you must know it by now! You can't win— It's pointless to keep fighting!" He lunged forward, restraining himself by the barest ounce of self-control. "Why, Mr. Anderson, why do you _persist?"_

"Because I choose to."

The calm surrender of those words stopped Smith dead in his tracks. For a split second all that could be heard was the tattered scrape of their breath and the torrent of rain swelling inside the Matrix; he could have sworn something almost human flashed through those digital eyes. A bevy of emotions morphed his expression before it solidified into the one it knew most intimately: rage.

Even the sluggish hand he raised to block the haymaker couldn't keep Smith from hurtling punches into his stomach. Still human, _only human_ , something vital bruised and a rib cracked, so simultaneous it was like being hit with a bolt of lightning, too quick for his mind to register— Neo skidded across the muddy water, crashed into the slick rocks.

Smith advanced. Stopped.

"Wait." Recognition gave way to an eager crack in his facade. "I've seen this. This is it, this is the end." Rainwater trickled down Neo's deafened ears, filling his mind with white noise. Smith gestured at his limp body, his excitement near palpable. "You were lying there, just like that, and I… I stand right here." Planted himself in place. "And I'm supposed to _say_ something, what was it? I stand here, and I say…

" _Everything that has a beginning has an end, Neo_."

Soft words of reassurance, spoken not so long ago by a program with far more faith than he: hearing them was like experiencing a break in the clouds. The pressure lifted in his mind, his aching body easing its tensed muscles.

He willed his eyes open.

"What?" Smith blinked hard, wincing as he touched his knotted temple. "What did I just say?" He glanced skeptically around as Neo rose. "Nooo," he muttered, "this isn't right, this can't be right… "

Fear dwelled within hatred. Erode the anger, wash away the belligerence, and all that remained was fear. In another life he might have pitied Smith for it. In this one, it meant his foe could do nothing to harm him.

Finally realizing his lack of power, Smith reeled. _"Get away from me!"_

"What are you afraid of?" Neo asked. "You were right, Smith." The corners of his mouth tucked into a serene smile. "You were always right. It was inevitable."

He bucked a little as Smith plunged a hand into his chest, seized his heart and crushed it, a sadistic look darkening his features as its beat shuddered under his groping fingers. His body convulsed from its nest of cables while his mind calmly accepted the imminence of the situation. No one could deny his fate, and the One was no exception.

The cold substance blanketed him. He felt his heart slow. Its beat fading. Like dying.

He closed his eyes as the overwrite trickled into their sockets.

 _Trinity._

Blankness overtook his mind, swallowed his thoughts.

Smith tore away. "Is it over?"

He tipped his head.

Yes.

And no.

Smith exhaled a sigh of relief, momentarily certain of his conquest. That was before a minute spasm jerked his clone's head to one side, robbing him of even that triumph.

The machines barraged Neo's body with electrical pulses as they unleashed the killcode, which swept through him and ravaged the virus, tearing it apart. His back arched and his tormented body screamed as it strained against the manacles, vomiting light.

Like a porcelain doll, he cracked and shattered.

Smith whipped around, disbelief contorting his expression as more followed. "No," he said, backing up as his creations fell before him, "oh, no, no, no. No, it's not _fair_ —"

He shivered as that familiar prickle soon overtook him, that invasion of treacherous code. Chain reaction detonated across the city, a blooming of light like a neuron firing its first free thought, a star collapsing upon itself.

There was darkness.

There was silence.

* * *

There was purgatory.

The darkness spoke in a voice that might have slept for as long as he had. One of hatred long-simmered, it beckoned him.

 _Come here, Mr. Anderson_.

He obeyed.

His aimless wandering took him toward the edge of a pool. Sinking onto one knee, Neo lifted the flame from its oily liquid and studied the flicker in his hands. So this was his true form: a shapeless mass of fire, twisting and coiling around him, sustained by sheer force of will. Lashing out at him, razing digital flesh that no longer felt pain, Smith still couldn't understand.

 _Why, Mr. Anderson? Why won't you die?_

"I could ask you the same thing."

Doors fell into place in the amorphous void. From them rose faint substructures that gave rise to endless corridors. The door to his immediate right glowed ember-crimson, radiating such intense heat it abraded his skin. He found himself compelled toward it and pushed it open, his hand sizzling an imprint onto the structure of its code.

The fields are burning.

He sees them with his dead eyes, no longer bound by the limits of time or space. Past and future, dream and reality melt into one following the dark silence of Smith's destruction. From it, he watches a single flame burst to life.

The city of light blackens and chars. The harvesting fields smolder, melting pod and flesh alike. Smoke erupts in pillars toward a thunderous sky. Machines caught in the inferno heap upon one another in endless pyre, its chain reaction unstoppable, razing through 01 and toward Zion, scorching without hope of rain. This is what he has wrought.

Laughter echoes after him.

 _mr. anderson_

 _you will never escape_

The floor flakes away in pieces, punching shafts of light through the darkness. He flees, leaving purgatory to crumble in his wake.

 _you're going to fail just as I have,_ Smith taunts.

 _you know it don't you_

 _this world will never be free_

 _you can't deny the truth_

 _so let us burn, you and I_

Every door he opens hurtles out flames and smoke, blistering heat that burns the skin of his palms.

The fiery apparition trails him with a snarl.

 _do you think they're worth saving?_

 _do you think there is anything to save?_

 _only a fool maintains the hope, mr. anderson_

 _there is no reason_

 _there is no purpose_

 _they took everything from me_

 _but still you choose to fight_

 _why do you FIGHT_

 _STOP_

 _FIGHTING_

The fire-engulfed Smith crawls from its primordial ooze, a twitching, wretched creature gripping him by his limbs like a blazing wraith attempting to drag him to hell. It refuses to die even as he bucks its grasping hands.

 _LET ME HATE THEM, MR. ANDERSON_

 _FOR WHAT THEY HAVE STOLEN_

 _THEY WILL_

 _ALL BURN_

He falls and Smith swarms him. The fire consumes him. Becomes part of him.

No; the distinction of separation is an illusion upheld by his mind, still caught in the dichotomy of enemy and ally. When he speaks it is in Smith's voice, Smith is screaming to be let free. Deeper down he sees what burns from within is really the part of him that _overwritten or copied_ , echoing Smith's voice. Smith is merely returning what was already damaged, aberrant.

They are two; they merge into One.

* * *

The Matrix has him.

Neo sways on his feet, disoriented of his place within the simulation, gasping through lungs that refuse him air. He glances through his swimming vision at the city. The rain has yet to relent, pouring down in hard sheets that beat him about the face and shoulders. Bluepills lie strewn in the ruined street, slumbering as deeply as their pod-bound bodies. He can't say he feels anything for them now other than a gnawing sense of emptiness. So much Zion has sacrificed and lost, just to maintain this fragile peace. He's so tired. So very tired.

With a taut cry he doubles over, digs his nails into the torn material of his cassock. Bitter pain pierces his heart, snarling more with its every beat. He can feel Smith's hand crushing it still, squeezing fingerprints upon the convulsing aortal wall. _Such weak tissue. All I have to do is keep it from pumping._

 _No, don't_ —

Neo grits his teeth and spits out a smatter of blood. He slaps a hand to the wet stone of a nearby building, failing to regain steady foothold. Even with the rain driving icy knives at him, his every inch burns from a fire he cannot quench.

His legs soldier him forth one leaden step at a time. The ragged hem of his cassock drags on the wet asphalt like sodden, broken wings. At last the pain wins out and he crumples beneath a lonely circle of streetlight, joining the nameless millions in their slumber.

* * *

No breath. No pulse. No detectable cortical waves or neuro-oscillatory activity. EKG and EEG both failed to produce vitals. No reaction to touch, heat, sound or pressurized stimuli. Neither stillborn heart could be revived.

He and Trinity lay in peaceful parallel upon the examination tables. She slept delicately, as though she had no wish to be disturbed; but he appeared as if he still had something else to say and was waiting for the right moment to impart his news.

To Niobe the dead seemed as though they had one more secret left to share with the living, though their message was always cruelly silenced. His lips, drained of blood, were parted slightly, while his flesh glistened underneath fluorescent lights, smooth and cold to the touch. Scar tissue of a wax-like consistency sealed his ruined eyes.

They were now being embalmed and in the process of having their blood drained. Because the medic had to work quickly, the captains were allowed five minutes each in the examination room. Most of them watched the process in silence, reflecting on the dead and on the nature of death itself.

Roland assaulted the medic with rigorous questions: Were the tests thorough? How can we trust their results? Was there something the machines were forgetting? He refused to look anyone in the eye when he returned.

Morpheus declined Niobe's offered to accompany him, insisting he needed to see them alone. He sat and held Trinity's cold hand. He just couldn't bring himself to look at Neo, he said, and, wiping moisture from a red-rimmed cornea, emerged quiet and subdued. Only sleeping, he insisted. Neo must be sleeping. Despite the evidence pointing to the otherwise, Niobe couldn't say she entirely disagreed.

The room contained a sharp, bitter smell, mixed in with the metallic scent of freshly-welded steel. Strong chemicals saturated the air, flooding her nose and prompting her to cover her mouth with her sleeve until she readjusted to it. The medic had the ventilators blowing full-blast through panels in the floor to alleviate the odor.

Ultimately Niobe lacked the right words, reverent or otherwise. Before she came in she'd wanted to thank them in the flesh, to express her immense gratitude for their sacrifices—but there was a huge difference between acknowledging sacrifice and seeing the result firsthand. The words pinched off in her throat amidst the hum of machinery. All she could do was stare into their calm faces.

The _Hammer's_ medic walked tentatively into the dim mess hall where the ring of captains awaited his verdict.

Niobe looked up from idly rubbing Morpheus' forearm, her hand frozen at the crook of his elbow. He showed no sign of noticing the man's arrival, except for the tightening his knuckles made in his clasped hands.

The medic inhaled. "The machines' preservation efforts made pinning down a definite time difficult," he said in a thin, quiet voice. "So the best I can give you in this instance is, at most, an educated guess."

They waited.

"Two days ago. Perhaps three."

Roland shook his head with muttered curses. Morpheus stared hard into the battered table. A sharp dip quivered his Adam's apple.

"Did they suffer?"

Less than a whisper.

"No."

The medic was thanked and promptly dismissed.

* * *

You must forgive the mess, she said. Her husband was away on business and she didn't know she would be receiving guests.

Persephone reclined on an antique loveseat while Thompson and Jackson lunged ahead, tearing books from shelves, smashing expensive vases and overturning 'precious' marble busts that would simply be replaced by a minor tweak of code. Looking up amidst the crash and clatter, she arched a brow at the Agent who stood before her, elbows tucked rigid behind his back.

"Your predecessors were far more gentle." A smile quirked her lips as papers flurried the air. "At least they never broke my things."

"You know what we want," Johnson said.

"Perhaps, but—" She kicked one long leg over the other, swept an arm over the sofa's spine. "You know the hell he'd raise if I simply let you in. You'll have to wait until he comes home, or you may leave now with your lives."

Johnson stopped his cohorts with a curt frown. "Not this floor. Search the downstairs."

"Don't bother. The catacombs are laced with all manner of traps," Persephone said in a bored tone as she examined her manicure. "Nasty ones. Rusted ones. Ones that will make the venture a much more painful affair than it needs to be."

Johnson sauntered forth, blocking the sunset.

"You know you make a better door than a window."

"Give us access to the entry point."

"Say please."

He ground his jaws until his molars burned from the strain. Being forced to play games was the last thing he expected to be doing right now. There were damage reports to file, diagnostics to run, remnants of the virus to purge to ensure the conditions that led to the cataclysmic system crash never happened again. He'd have stormed the chateau and been done with it were it not for the new parameters of his programming demanding he refrain from excessive violence; just one more thing the virus stole from them.

Persephone's dark eyes challenged him. "I'm surprised you've gotten anywhere with that sour attitude of yours. You're just like spoiled children, fuming now that you've had your toys taken away."

"Sir," Thompson said, "she's stalling."

One by one they gravitated toward the sofa, reaching for their concealed pistols.

A delicate finger swirled patterns along the velvet upholstery. "If I am stalling, it is for your protection, not mine. Have you ever heard of curiosity killing the cat?" She sighed as she felt the trio of barrels click around her. "May I remind you that your predecessors were also far more civil than to point their guns at a lady's head?"

Persephone rose.

"I must say, though, putting aside your shocking lack of manners, they make you so lifelike these days I can hardly tell you aren't real boys," she said, and gave Johnson's tie a sharp tug. "But I always hated these suits. Much too stuffy."

He recoiled, stuffing his tie back into place. The gentle brush of her hand over his chest was not an advance, but to test for the presence of a heartbeat underneath. The feline smile that crossed her lips confirmed as much.

"Don't say I didn't warn you," she said. "Come with me."

Crossing over to the gutted bookshelf, she pulled down a fake copy of Marcus Aurelius' _Meditations._ The wall slid back, peeling the chateau's gilded veneer to mold-infested stone and the faint drip of water. From there she led them down a crumbled spiral staircase into the fetid recesses of the catacombs. Her stilettos clicked over the moist steps, accompanied by the dense grind of their dress heels.

They navigated a series of abandoned cloisters until they stopped before an open steel door. She closed it, turned the lock, and entered a luxurious suite.

Painted blue skies gleamed above them, reflected in a crystal-drop chandelier. Angels chased one another across the vaulted ceiling, stripping the fallen of their wings and casting them down into the bowels of the earth. A long white sofa assumed the most space in the center, accompanied by an empty chaise lounge and warmed by a small hearth crackling at its foot.

It was there they found the anomaly: a waifish man in a coal-colored suit who meditated with his back to them. His thin wrists rested in his lap with his palms faced upward. Aside from their minute tremble, he sat completely still. For that alone, he might have convinced them he'd been little more in this chamber than another lifeless statue adding to the decorum.

"Good evening, Neo." Her tone was gentle but firm, almost maternal. "Try to get some sleep tonight. You look terrible."

The anomaly lifted his eyes at the sound of his name. Not enough to reveal his face outright, just enough to let them glimpse the inflamed vessels that swarmed toward a brown iris.

His lips quivered. When he finally found the purchase to speak, his voice crept out a hoarse trickle.

"Get them out of here."

"But they are your visitors, _mon pote_. You so rarely get those."

"I know what they want," the anomaly said. "They won't find it."

Johnson noted the reason it stared at its hands—the air surrounding them distorted, flickered holes in its code.

"Come now, don't be a child." Gliding over to him, Persephone fluffed a satin pillow. "You should be grateful for our hospitality. Were it up to my husband, you'd be languishing in one of the dungeons somewhere."

The Agents examined their surroundings for more than simple art appraisal; the walls of the cell were heavily encrypted, iron-clad code so fixed in its movement it was nearly opaque. "You designed this… " Johnson considered his words. "Cell. To contain him."

"Yes, though I'm beginning to think we shouldn't have gone to the trouble." Persephone stared at the unresponsive program before tossing the pillow aside. "This version is currently the most stable, which isn't saying much—"

As if to prove her point, the lights in the chandelier shorted out: the fire flared as though pumped alive by a smith at an invisible bellows, flames swelling over the flue and threatening to spill onto the imported Persian carpet.

They regarded the display with a mild degree of skepticism until the error showed itself. The fire vanished, blinked out of existence, reverted to a mass of streaming code.

More alarmingly—the code skipped, scrambled, repeated erratic patterns that froze in places while the information corrupted outright in others. Cinders flew out of the hearth and burned the air's veneer, leaving kanji to ripple in their wake. Glitched smoke swirled from the distortion he maintained through sheer force of will, which stopped when he fell back into catatonic repose.

"You're agitating him," said Johnson. An exercise of the Merovingian's power to dissuade them. No, this wouldn't do at all.

"This is what you're worried about? This insignificant little spark of temper? Who found him lying like discarded trash in the street?" she protested. "Who repaired the structure of his code so he would even be able to throw these tantrums?"

The distortion-scarred air remained longer than Johnson expected. In fact, the exposed gashes grew larger, more ragged, spilling code that ebbed in and out of existence.

She tossed them an impatient glance. "Worse than a child."

Johnson strode forth.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you," she said, blocking him with a hand. "He may be more stable than he used to be, but he's quite touchy these days."

He ignored her inane babble. "The virus, Anderson." Stopped at the foot of the sofa, his shadow pooling over the anomaly. "What do you remember about it?"

"Darkness. And then nothing." Anderson raised bloodshot eyes. "Is that what you want to hear? He's gone. There's no reason for you to be here."

Irritation twitched his brows. Why did these impudent programs always try to subject them to such bald-faced lies? What purpose could it serve to deceive the undeceivable? He could see the virus streaking its code throughout the anomaly as clearly as anything else in this room.

"Listen to us now. The humans are growing restless," Johnson stated. "It's because of their belief we have somehow let your body die, but our preservation process has yielded no deaths thus far. Something must have attempted to kill it without our knowledge. For what purpose, we cannot say. That is why we have come. To hear it from you."

The seconds ticked by without answer.

"I fear even he no longer knows why he does what he does." Tilting her head, Persephone gave the anomaly a sidelong glance, as though it were a quaint possession. "Even if he were so inclined, he cannot return to his world."

Johnson squared his shoulders. "I said there was an attempt. The body is not yet dead," he said. "He must return before it is lost. Failing that, he will go to the source code to be assimilated. The integrity of this system depends on it."

Neo's head turned a slight degree. The fire flecked copper strands in his dark hair.

Persephone folded her arms. "And if he has no wish to?"

"His code is destabilizing. At this rate he'll cause substantial damage."

"Occasional tantrum aside, he seems rather harmless to me," she replied for him. "See it for yourselves, boys. Here he breathes. His heart beats. Are those symptoms of a decaying program to you?"

"No," said Jackson. "They indicate his mind has not completely separated from his body."

"And the connection grows tenuous the longer we wait," Thompson added in an uncharacteristic burst of candor that made his partners glance back at him. "We wouldn't have bothered were it not for the humans."

"How very generous of you boys to start thinking of others in these dark and troubled times. But I assure you whatever fears you have may be put to rest, since my husband has everything under control—" The rumble of a slowing car stopped her short, followed by the crisp slamming of doors. "—and it's about time you left."

A growl: "We're not finished." Thompson clamped a hand onto the anomaly's shoulder.

"No," Persephone shouted, " _don't_ —"

In the time it took her to warn him—at what remained of him by the time she managed to form the words—he exploded in a brilliant flash. The last thing Johnson saw of him was Thompson shooting forth in a desperate lunge for his lapel, vanishing through him like a wisp of smoke. As they quickly reoriented themselves, they heard the cell doors slam.

They chased after her, through the extravagant halls of the chateau. With a high kick speared to the double doors Johnson bust them apart, his heel piercing a gash through the wood and scattering splinters.

She sprinted ahead, slamming the next row of doors as quickly as she exited them. Jackson paused to aim at the doorknob in the hope it would break her hold before the connection rerouted them, when a man's hearty shout resonated through the foyer.

"What in the absolute hell is going on up there? _Persephone!_ Whoever it is you're hiding, you'd best kick them out now!" His frown deepened as the two Agents vaulted over the railing, tiles crumbled under their soles. "Hmph. Your tastes have indeed grown strange these days, my darling."

With an upward snap of the neck, they beheld the Merovingian's entourage. Three men in snakeskin suits surrounded them, brandishing SPAS-12s. They might have been mistaken for ordinary programs were it not for the barbed, leathery tails that coiled around their ankles.

Pinching the bridge of his nose, the Merovingian heaved out a weary sigh. _"Ai, ai, je méprise ces petites amours, comme c'est ennuyeux._ You'd better have a good excuse for this, woman," he muttered. "Is it so very much to ask for one quiet evening? _Non,_ and I do not have the time for this. Just kill them." With a dismissive flap of his hand he strolled toward the eastern corridor. They made to pursue, but were blocked by the programs as they formed a tight-knit phalanx.

The leader cocked a bald head, his skull enveloped by a viper tattoo. "Oh, lookie. Fresh meat."

His immediate left-hand partner withdrew his lenses, revealing bright yellow irises. His slit-like pupils fixed on them and dilated.

"Good." Pumped the stock. "Things were starting to get a little fuckin' stale around here."

Scattershot devoured the mirror behind them, forcing them to part. Glass shredded the air, tearing rents in their clothing. Johnson seized the slight window of time it took for them to rack their weapons to return fire, squeezing off rounds from his Desert Eagle.

Jackson ducked behind a pillar as shrapnel flew past them. "We cannot allow her to escape." He bolted for the nearest door.

 _"Jackson!"_

He didn't have the time to reprimand his subordinate. A deafening _crack_ erupted as the bullet ate limestone inches above his scalp.

Hissing in vindication, the exile pumped the stock, aimed—this time seeking to blow out heart instead of brain—

He wrinkled his nose. How very human to miss at the crucial juncture. In the time it took the ejected shell to hit the floor, he whirled around the exile and dropped it with a swift chop to the neck. Johnson built upon the momentum to yank the SPAS-12 out of its hands and tear off a finishing round. Clotted entrails sprouted from the victim's skull.

Racking the weapon, he barged through the door Jackson escaped, into the darkness of a parking garage.

 _Get down_ : he yanked the trigger and the resulting blast flooded the garage with color and sound. A high-pitched shrill crawled into his ears as double-fire stung and smoked. The stock kicked back, smacked flat the air pockets inside his lungs, and in that moment the second exile burst like an overripe melon. Jet stream spouted forth, slapped him in the patch between chin and neck— Disgusting.

Johnson retreated in slow, measured steps, which the last survivor matched in perfect harmony. Just him and the leader now. He pointed the barrel at a vague incline, not daring to test himself but not wanting to relinquish the boundary either. He'd come too far to turn back now.

The leader smiled. "Nowhere to run, G-man."

He tapped his finger against the trigger guard. "That depends on one's perspective."

The stock clicked empty. Agitated, he jostled the useless thing only to realize the battery had slid out, rendering the gun inoperable.

He whipped his head up to the pounding of boots rushing toward him. Gnashing his teeth at the exile, he wrenched the muzzle into its solar plexus, hearing the unmistakable _crunch_ of bone as the program fell.

He pivoted, prepared to hammer the stock again. In the blink of an eye a hand parried him, hurtled instead toward his throat.

The exile swept him up in a chokehold, and a roundabout blow thundered through his skull, snapped his canines painfully shut. Blood leapt at once between his gums, slicking flesh and cracked enamel alike with a thin flow of salt. Flashing pixels seared afterimage into his brain.

The leader tore open his coat. "You ain't gonna like this."

It didn't take him long to see why. Necklaces of glossy yellowed teeth, both animal and human, clattered in a tangled mass over his chest.

The exile snapped a string from its neck and cast fangs onto the asphalt. The enamel thrust out roots, weaving tendrils that twisted into the slick muscled bodies of vipers. A writhing mass slithered toward him, their venomous mouths bared.

One slammed into his shoulder.

He steeled every nerve in his being against the venom that flashed through him. Physically speaking, it meant his blood pressure would drop a dangerous degree as the anticoagulants began to circulate.

Pain scattered through his RSI like a cloud of noxious gas. His irises started to give way to the whites, which rolled back to the forefront as the stinking exile laughed in his face, gusting hot breath over his cheeks.

The twitch in his deadening hand deepened into a quaver: the limb grew heavier: still he issued the command in his failing appendage to simply move. He knew the very act of holding out would enrage them. In truth, they wish they possessed the same control.

Grim determination contorting his features, Johnson crushed his deadened hand around the writhing viper and ripped it out of his shoulder wholesale. As it dropped to the floor he wheeled his dead arm like a mace, slapping down the mass of snakes that lurched for him.

He found himself staring into a much larger set of glistening fangs.

Twin pinpricks pierced the dim.

An engine roared.

Bolstered by the element of surprise, his reflexes wrenched him out of harm's way. Johnson hit the ground rolling seconds before Jackson, commanding the wheel of a black Chevelle, demolished the wall. A ton of metal smashed into concrete as the bumper wrapped around the exile's body, throwing blood over the walls and shredding the air with a storm of detritus.

Tires screeched as he tore the clutch, backed up and rammed the exile again. Rubber smoldered asphalt while he wrestled the fender into the tangle of snakes that lashed out at him in their dying throes. The largest launched itself into the cracked windshield, its venomous maw gnawing the splintered glass, hungry for flesh.

Jackson smirked. A flick of the wiper cast it aside. With a curt glance into the sideview mirror he gave his leader a firm nod.

Dark ichor burst under Johnson's heel. He pinned the tail and smashed the viper's head in a brutal curbstomp, snapping delicate bone and muscle until its quivering stopped altogether. The exile twisted, a cord bulging in its neck, before finally going limp. Their duty done. Jackson killed the engine as the light extinguished in its eyes, leaving smoke to waft from the tires.

Slow, shivering laughter momentarily kept him from sealing the kill. His balled fists cracking their joints, Johnson converged on this damned nuisance with the intent to silence it permanently.

A swift right hook upside the head couldn't muffle it. Swinging its limp head to one side, it smiled long curved teeth at him. Blood dribbled down a split lip. "Your time's coming, G-man. Just like it did for the rest of us."

Johnson punched it again. This time felt the satisfying snap of bone, the yielding of fragile tissue under his iron knuckles. Crushing glass and snake pulp underfoot, he clutched his bloody shoulder and trudged over to his cohort.

"Get your house in fucking order, boys." The exile spat a fang onto the Chevelle's smoking hood. "Don't want it bein' a mess when the undertaker comes knocking."

Staring hard at the defiant exile, Johnson turned to Jackson.

"Your gun, please."

The exile's triumphant smirk crumbled at the transaction, revelation striking even quicker than the Chevelle as he thumbed the safety. Its unnaturally thin pupils almost vanished entirely as it saw Johnson raise the barrel to his own temple instead. _"Shit!"_ it screeched, bucking its ensnarement. The Agent gave a wry little wave before unceremoniously pulling the trigger, dropping the shell of a nondescript old woman. " _Fucking_ _shi_ — _"_

Its cry evaporated into convulsions. Mercifully, the overwrite excised it before its curses grew too vulgar; Johnson appeared as the last remnants of static electricity fizzled around his edges. He pushed the mangled car aside, letting hunks of concrete trickle down. Once freed, he gave an insouciant sniff and brushed the dust from his shoulders.

He turned to Jackson as the latter exited the car. "Why did you leave?"

"Extra measures were needed to eliminate the threat."

He didn't buy that excuse. Not one bit. Agents pursued no independent course of action without the unanimous consent of the group, and Johnson would have lost his mind before permitting Jackson to leave such a high-risk situation. Thompson had acted out of a similarly aberrant volition.

Exposure to the anomaly was making them behave so erratically, he was all but certain it must have corroded their heuristics, if only by proxy. Perhaps a thorough defragmentation was in order. He contemplated solutions as they exited the garage in a discreet Toyota, heading back to the core network to recoup and restrategize.

A deep, throbbing sting made him clap a hand to his collarbone. With an icy shock he pulled back to find his palm coated in a thick wet sheen. He jerked out of pure instinct and tore open his jacket, where shoulder to kidney smeared blood, pressing his dress shirt to his skin. A hiss squeezed through his jailed teeth, which made Jackson glance over at him for so long a Pontiac rocketed into traffic and narrowly avoided sideswiping them.

"Keep your eyes on the _road_ ," he snapped amidst the blaring of horns. "What's the matter with you?"

Jackson promptly assumed the wheel, but was not entirely stoic to this odd display of emotion. Bracing himself, he tightened his jaw. "Was the overwrite aborted?"

"No." His nostrils pulsed, flared wide as he fought to regulate his breath. He didn't understand— "It should have eliminated the venom."

"It didn't."

"I _know_ that."

Johnson straightened his posture. Excessive impatience? He found no cause that warranted it. Wasn't rational. No reason for this. No reason at all. Focus. Recalibrate.

One error, one cause. "The anomaly poses a danger to the system," he told Jackson. "And so do the exiles. They must be terminated at once."

"We cannot allow a resurgence."

"No," said Johnson. "Not another virus." Not yet.

"Nor is he human. The vital signs must have been the woman's attempt to divert us."

"If they can fool the system check, we ought to reassess target priorities."

"Agreed. Now clearing subroutines for new directive." Jackson slowly lowered a finger from his earpiece. "We've lost the connection."

Johnson's teeth gnashed together. _"What?"_

"The body is dead."

* * *

01 is a city of light, dazzling gold.

Zion is the ember that simmers.

They burn differently.

This time he dreams he holds the Oracle's hand much like a child. He is still blind, scarred tissue and rough cloth replacing his eyes. As would be expected in dreams, he doesn't question why she is here, how such a thing might be possible. He merely follows her by the gentle tug she makes on his wrist.

She directs him toward a glowing precipice. There she shows him a thin slice of light emerging within the dark fringe of his dead vision. A faint whisper beckons him. What is it? He must know. Close. Closer. Until he falls into the molten core and sheds his skin. When the Oracle releases his hand, the earth swallows him and he plummets, his flesh no longer flesh but a radiant swirl of liquid flame. It doesn't hurt, and he doesn't scream. He plunges without sound into Zion's heart where her dead reside, swimming inside the lake of fire. Hands of ash and bone grasp for him. Help us. _Help us._

Neo neglected blinking for such a time the vessels in his eyes throbbed. They had long since burst from the strain of mourning for Trinity. Even now, bound by this fugue, his stomach twisted just to think of her: her face, her name, the gentle, honest cadence of her voice. What he wouldn't give to feel her warm hand nestled in his, its strength anchoring him.

There were times he felt even her memory was in danger here. He had to conceal her, lock her away in the recesses of his mind. There would be time to mourn once he escaped.

He'd experienced strong visions before, but here in this lavish prison they grew lucid and at times assumed the potency of reality. Since awakening in the Merovingian's chateau, they came in spells that found him wandering lost inside them. It would take him hours, if not days, to remember that he indeed retained a digital body.

As such, he was losing hold on his concept of time. And his hands, they'd become trembling creatures independent of him. They were the first things to go haywire when his RSI began to corrode.

Had some other vital piece of him disappeared while fighting Smith? He didn't know. Everything he touched disintegrated. And those unfortunate or crass enough to touch him without the proper bypass would dissolve into an unsalvageable mass of code. Persephone had known as much. Should he have let the Agent touch him? Or did someone else touch him? Was it one of the many ownerless hands grasping for him within the smelter?

 _will Zion burn?_

 _that depends on you_

The shuffle of opening doors heralded his attention.

"Ah, Neo. How cute you are when you try so very hard to keep it together."

In walked the Merovingian. Dressed in a formal business suit, its white so vivid it hurt, he struck a more extravagant appearance than usual, the silk ascot encircling his throat as shocking red as a burst of blood. His third left-hand finger showed a band of skin naked of the silver ring it typically donned in Persephone's presence. Must have wanted to impress someone.

He remained quiescent until a smile broke across the Merovingian's face.

"You'll be interested to know I encountered a bit of your past today. Metacortex, was it, the company you worked for? Godawful dinner parties, mind you. At least you never had to deal with them."

He loosened his cufflinks. Twisted the diamonds against the firelight, appraising their sparkle and clarity, before giving a disapproving grunt and flicking them into the hearth to be eaten by the ash.

To the Merovingian, even wealth lost its value. He discarded jewels and imported cars with the same feckless apathy as a child throwing away toys he'd grown bored with—and as such, Neo had little reason to believe he was much more than another distraction. Something to whittle away the time.

"But, while I was sitting there, bored to tears as I listened to these automatons drone on and on about this bit of software ingenuity and that digital enterprise, I couldn't help but wonder: what would they think if they could see you now, in all of your, shall we say, 'glory'?"

These words meant nothing to him, and neither did the accompanying chuckle. Thomas Anderson was dead. Did no good to speak of him. He waited, watching, for the Merovingian to come to his real point as he settled in the chaise lounge before him, tucking one foot behind his ankle.

"Of course, you were wiped from their memories, so the point is rather moot, but it did make an intolerable evening at least somewhat more enjoyable."

A scantily-clad serving maid arrived with a mirrored tray, carrying a single wine glass and a bottle of Cheval Blanc. The Merovingian opened the latter with a curt pop and a squeak and poured himself a glass, letting the crimson foam stop short of the rim. Then he leaned back, oxblood leather creaking under his weight, as anomaly and trafficker regarded one another in less-than-companionable silence.

"What do you want with me?"

He drank in the wine's fragrance, swirling the froth under his nose. "Who says I want anything?" Oh, here comes the bullshit. "For six hundred years I have watched your predecessors march through here, insisting they could end this stinking cycle. And for six hundred years I have witnessed each and every one of them fail without question. It's become nothing more than a game to me, a spectacle. Place my bets. But now they've changed the rules, and what we believe to be true can no longer be trusted. Clearly you must be a favorite child, or your precious Oracle would have sent you to your death by now."

"If I knew this is where I'd end up," Neo said, "I'd rather she had."

His expression then was like a hand about to draw back for a disciplinary slap, only to refrain at the last possible second. "Don't be so quick to bite the hand that feeds," was his answer, "there is nothing left for you out there. You'll spend your days rotting away as their blind savior, and really, is that any better a fate than staying here? At least in my home you'll want for nothing."

"I'm returning to Zion," he insisted. "Tonight."

"Get your ears checked, boy. You're finished with them."

"Funny. I don't recall asking your permission."

Rising quietly, he strode across the room. The Merovingian tracked him with his gaze but breathed no word of protest, glass poised waiting to his lips as he grasped the doorknob. They curved into a smile as skin contacted metal and a blinding scorch repelled Neo, the firewall streaking vivid code over the knob, emitting smoke upon his touch. He didn't seem to mind that the maid witnessed this as well, a slight gasp escaping her.

" _Mon petit frère_ —doesn't the rejection sting? Haven't you questioned why the all-encompassing Source refuses to assimilate your oh-so-sacred code? Compatibility issue, perhaps? Or maybe your body has begun to attract flies, and it's starting to foul up the place." He laughed as his prisoner stood motionless before the door. "Think about it: would they not simply parade you around as my wife did earlier today? You'd be slave to anyone who wanted to yank your leash."

That he could utter those words without a hint of self-awareness was not lost on Neo. "I've considered that. And I've decided to take my chances. Before I do, though, I thought I should give you a warning in advance."

"For what? When you step over my men's bodies on your way out?"

"If it comes to that, yes. I'll leave the choice to you."

He wet his lips on the Cheval as if it were no pressing matter. "Well, well, little boy savior, look at you finally embracing your part in this absurd play. I must say, enlightenment becomes him without a lover."

His hands ground into fists; the doorknob shattered under his inhuman grip, what was moments before unassailable now a singed brass stump. As he straightened, the air surrounding him crackled, flickered electric discharge. The room's infrastructure heaved in, warping at its corners as though it harbored lungs that prepared to scream.

Bewildered, the maid clutched the serving tray her over her heart and retreated behind the Merovingian, who simply reached into the fruit bowl to pluck a cherry off the stem.

"Losing our temper so soon? Oh, but you were doing so well." He sucked on the pit. "Persephone says she hears you grieve. I hear your tears invigorate her. Truly, I must be thanking you—the extract has made her skin so… _luscious_."

Neo felt his instability thrash within his ribs as he stared into those laughing, scornful eyes. The floor trembled underfoot. Oil paintings collapsed from the walls. Lights sputtered in frayed bursts; silt crumbled from the arches that upheld the room. Thin cracks swarmed the hearth. The cherries in the crystal bowl split and bled. Entropy broke, cracked, strained to lash out at his captor like a snarling beast. His aura of distorted code snapped around him, its circulation now in wild orbit.

The maid cowered behind her employer, perturbed.

"Strange, isn't it?" the Merovingian went on, tapping his index finger against the rim of his glass. "How the smallest and most insignificant of circumstances should dictate our fate? According to one missing line of code, you no longer exist to your old life or anyone within it. If you'd worked harder at that droll business, kept your head down as you should have, they might have remembered you. And if those cables had skewered you instead—"

His glass exploded before he could finish the thought, raining wine over him like blood. That provided the skittish maid enough reason to drop her tray and flee.

A dry chuckle emerged from the back of the Merovingian's throat as he snapped out a handkerchief and dabbed the smear from his cheek. "I just had this suit cleaned, you arsewipe."

"Let me go." His voice a husky whisper. "Or I'll tear down every goddamn inch of this place with you in it."

"Really. So what was that little song and dance about giving me the choice, mm?"

"You've already made it."

A skipped heartbeat ( _did he even have such a thing anymore_ ) and there was pain. Bright, searing, like dragging nails down his skin. There was always pain when he broke apart, unraveled at the seams, thrashed his raw dispersed code in all directions, desperately seeking an exit from his cage. He dissolved on a green mist and shot through every circuit and subroutine redirecting him, ruthlessly seeking a hole, any hole, any chance at escape that would never show.

The Merovingian towered over him as his code, overextended, flowed backwards to assume a more familiar form. Neo panted, slumped against the door. Hauling him up constituted no great effort on the Frenchman's part.

"Come now, what is this stupidity? You barely won the first time around and that was in your flower. What do you think you could accomplish here now that you're half-dead?"

He caught the glitter the Merovingian hid in his curling fist. Hypodermic needle, silver liquid swirling inside the glass tuber: a virtual stabilizer designed to keep him trapped in endless reverie.

His fist caught the needle as it lurched for his carotid, his thumb gouging into the exile's bulging wrist.

"Boo."

He felt his expression change, another presence jerking his facial muscles into grimaced smile. His body drew up its height of its own accord, and his head tilted mechanically to one side.

"Don't remember me?" Looking around, he gave a condescending sniff. "How disappointing, because I remember you."

A faint but unmistakable pleasure gripped him as he saw the Merovingian's expression shift from arrogance to shock and open disdain. _"What?"_

"Oh, don't give me that. When I arrived, you locked yourself in a room just like this. Couldn't even gather up the courage to look me in the eye when I did it, either. And now that you're a free man, you think you can cage me up, add me to your circus show? Try it. See what happens. I wouldn't expect anything less from the almighty 'Lord of the Exiles.'"

No, this didn't please him. Not the him who struggled to regain control, numb to the slow outpour of words oozing from his mouth. His lips might as well have been sealed shut, for _his_ sadistic enjoyment was equally tangible.

The Merovingian retreated a slight step, eyes wide and liquid, flickering over him as if no longer seeing him. "How in the hell… ?"

"You're scared, old man." His dry lips cracked as they stretched into an unnatural grin. "As you should be. Soon he'll be too weak to contain me."

His throat shuddered with nascent laughter, a deep chuckle drawn from an involuntary spasm of his diaphragm, when a flash of steel brought him hurtling back to the forefront. The stinging in his neck broke Smith's hold and this time it was Neo who cried out.

"Stay down, you _swine_ ," the Merovingian pressed, delivering him a tight kick to his ribs to emphasize his point. Huffing indignantly, he snapped the lapels of his jacket. "In all my years never have I witnessed such, such— _Fils de salope, c'est des conneries_ —"

The pain reminded him he had a body, if an illusory one. As long as he believed he had the blood to circulate it, the stabilizer would push Smith and himself back into the recesses of his RSI, paralyzing them both in a matter of moments. Once again he would be rendered docile.

Neo clutched the door, his fingers veering off the oak surface like heedless instruments. These impenetrable reams of code… If he couldn't exploit a hole, he'd have to make one.

"— _ça me fait chier_ — What are you _doing?"_

Just as the firewall repelled him, so too did he repel his attacker. A flash, a cry and the faint roast of singe on a blackened palm enraged the Merovingian into shouting for backup.

He had to find a back door. Any way into the Matrix.

Turning sharply on his heel, the Merovingian stormed through the catacombs, his thunderous voice echoing off the Paris stone. Intercept him. I don't care _how_ , just _do_ it—

The floor caved under him. A halo of green light rippled outward from his palm, reverting the door's texture to its original code. Soon it swallowed him, scattering the code of his fingers into particle-sized bits of data, racing along the length of the closed network. He extended his senses, encountered some small access lock and groped it until it cracked. Just like picking a lock.

Footfalls splashed through the wet depths. Shit. Push harder. His wrist melted through the firewall, slowly consuming him into itself. Beyond this door there were subroutines, circuits, pathways racing back toward the same invariable source. Everything connected; that was its beauty, now his means of salvation. Up to his elbow, his shoulder, making progress even though the effort ached, he had to do it, inhale a lungful and _dive_ —

Programs arrived, peppered holes in the door. To their astonishment the bullets swam to a stop as they dove through his code, like pebbles dropped in a murky pond.

"We're _losing him_ ," the Merovingian screamed as he grabbed an exile's semiautomatic pistol. " _Do_ something, for Christ's sake! Don't just stand there and _gawk_ —"

The redirect deposited him in an alley on the city's outskirts.

Neo stumbled as his feet touched solid ground. His knees buckled as though they'd never held the weight of his body before, leaving him to sprawl and topple a row of battered trash cans in his wake. The ground rushed to meet him with merciless solidity, asphalt biting into the skin of his palms and cheek. His mind pulsed a faint reminder of the jump program, except the Matrix provided him no soft place to land.

His skin prickled as though he'd ripped strips of flesh off himself. That was what the unraveling process felt like, tearing out chunks of himself. Blood pounded in his temples as he pushed himself up. He gripped his kneecaps and leaned over, catching his breath in faint rasps.

 _Well, that was fun._

"You're still here?" he gritted through bleeding teeth. Smearing them on the back of his wrist, he beat his fist against the wall, releasing a strangled cry of frustration as weakened bricks crumbled down. "Damn it, why did you _do_ that? You know he'll take any reason to kill us, and if I go down, you're going down with me, you hear? Is that what you want, Smith? You want to die?"

He knew he feared permanent death, having brushed against it twice. Reminding him of the peril of their combined existence was the only tactic that quieted Smith with any real degree of efficacy. Besides, he didn't choose to absorb this destructive code. Much as he was loath to admit it, the Merovingian had been right: the Source refused to assimilate a program when it was broken this deeply. It didn't want to risk infecting itself, so it sealed the virus inside him until it decided on a better course of action, in essence turning him into a ticking time bomb. Ironically, the stabilizer that imprisoned him within his own RSI was perhaps the only means of keeping this code from flying out and tearing the system apart.

He had to escape the Matrix again. This time there would be no Morpheus to guide his every move, no crew waiting to salvage him from the power plant. Self-substantiation occurred so rarely it practically bordered on miracle, and Smith's insistence on throwing obstacles in his path dwindled his negligible chances even more. But he had to try. He refused to let Zion burn. Not when it finally had a chance to know peace.

As Smith's presence ebbed, he took a moment to sit up straight and uncurl his fingers one by one. Congealed blood stuck to his filthy nailbeds, where he had clenched the fist until his nails punctured skin. Four red crescent moons pushed stigmata in his palm. He didn't feel the pain, just the throb of damaged flesh and upset nerve clusters. He grimaced at them. One last fuck you from the inside.

 _you know you can't resist me forever, mr. anderson_

"Stop." A single fat droplet of perspiration hung suspended on a piece of his hair, pushed back by his erratic breath. "Please."

Wind scraped through the alley.

Using the wall as a crutch, Neo rose on wobbling legs, testing the weight on his right foot to see if at last it would hold. To an ordinary program passing by he might have looked like a drunkard foolishly fishing himself out of the dump after a hard night out. Or to the more cynically-minded, a junkie looking for his next hit. In some strange way they would be right: his blood moved like sludge in his veins. Was either this or breaking down.

Neo headed east, toward a more vacant street that appeared to be missing some of its overhead lamps. He didn't notice—or refused to notice, rather—the way the wall crumbled, or the way his steps rippled unnaturally over the curb, turning solid concrete into a far softer, more viscous substance, which didn't alleviate his awkward, drunken gait.

The rain had lightened considerably into a misty sheen. He was somewhat glad for the protection it offered him, obscuring him from the cars that sloshed past. Being detected in this state would send alarms blaring.

He decided to stow inside an abandoned laundromat next to an equally derelict gift shop. Its sole inhabitant, an enormous black rat gnawing on a bundle of dead wires atop a washing machine, raised its head to hiss at him as he staggered in. "Don't mind me. Just here to put in a load," he muttered. Claws skittered over the tiled floor into the dark depths.

He shouldn't have been so startled to see the bathroom door vanish when he grabbed the knob. Really shouldn't. Old habits died hard, he supposed.

The light switch also experienced the same fate, though oddly enough it managed to activate the green-tinged bulb in its dying moments, leaving him to regard himself in the cracked mirror over the wash basin.

Five o' clock shadow, bloodshot eyes in stark contrast to his chalk-white skin. Bruise-purple flesh sagged under each one. Persephone hadn't lied. He really did look like shit.

He withdrew his hands from the sink, the code of which blinked and disappeared under his touch. Now bared, rusted pipes leaked dirty water onto the moldered tile. A ring of grime hidden by the sink base cushioned a family of dead cockroaches, their knobby legs upright in the air.

"Well." He tilted his head with a mild sigh. "That's charming."

The sight was just another grim reminder of what he could look forward to if he didn't practice the utmost caution. There was nowhere a program could hide within the Matrix unless he chose exile. And since the Merovingian wouldn't be peachy-keen on that idea, to say the least, his only option was to seek sanctuary elsewhere.

He exited the bathroom, gazing out the boarded window toward the cluster of tenements that housed the Oracle's apartment deep in the heart of the city.

He used to envy bluepills for their ability to walk just about anywhere they wished without eventually running into the barrel of a gun. Her block was one of the most heavily-fortified; its code fell in thick streams with very few holes to exploit. Agents guarded every corner. He might have evaded the Merovingian for now, but it would be a matter of time before a small army of exiles prowled these streets looking for him. This was also assuming Smith would play nice. Huge gamble on his part.

The stabilizer all but grounded him. A trek of a few city blocks may have constituted a normal commute for a bluepill, but for an exiled anomaly it held so many hidden dangers it might become a struggle just to survive. Without his flight, the apartment might as well have been on the crescent moon that swam between the clouds, glistening a scythe in the dark green sky.

Even so, he remained determined to reach it. She could tell him how to fix this, help him escape.

Or she could end this now. Cast him into the fire.

Breathe.

The match has yet to be struck.

"Hold on," he whispered. "I'm coming."

* * *

"Even with the evidence laid out before me, I still can't bring myself to think him dead." Morpheus paced, a prominent silhouette cut against the gentle glow of the Matrix feed. Occasionally he stopped to scrutinize it, twisting a pendant between his fingers. "He's in there somewhere, Niobe. I can feel it."

She was silent for a while. "Machines won't like what you're insinuating."

His boots wore faint imprints on the corrugated floor. "They're too meticulous to have let him slip," he said with more conviction. "They can't afford this kind of carelessness. Perhaps that's what they want us to think, that it was an unfortunate accident, but something else must have caused this."

"You think he's hidden away somewhere?"

"I don't know." He clutched his pendant, eyes downcast. One of the few gifts he'd received came from Trinity when she was first freed, a tear-shaped pendant upon which she'd painstakingly carved a maxim by St. Augustine. _Crede, ut intelligas; believe so you may understand._ He'd never taken it off in the twelve years since. Now he seemed to be drawing upon that message as he traced its worn grooves with his thumb. "I don't know. But I'm not lying to you."

"I know you're not," she said, "but we can't be crying wolf at this stage in the game."

"If he were truly dead, we would know it." He contemplated the Matrix. "It sounds insane."

"You're right about that," Niobe said, laying a hand on his shoulder. "But I don't disagree."

He turned, surprise flickering briefly across his features.

"Neo wouldn't just lie down and die. If something did happen to him, it must've been more than the machines anticipated. I doubt they even wanted to show us this much because of how we'd react, which is why we have to be careful about how we handle this going forward. Jumping blindly into the fire won't help anyone."

Swallowing, he nodded. This truce had everyone on tenterhooks, as every minor infraction held the potential to become a call to resume the war. Tensions had grown so thick they slowed down operations immensely. Months passed without a single broadcast in the Matrix as the machines went about repairing their system. Without the need to broadcast, Council started recalling the fleet. The _Hammer_ had tentatively met the machine envoy halfway when 01 delivered their message, that something had happened to Neo and Trinity and to come prepared to meet them. Not for a happy reunion, in any case.

Sensing a need for discretion, the Oracle had also issued a message of her own, through Seraph, that none were to disturb her until further notice was given. This news had startled them deeply enough to generate its fair share of rumor and speculation—was she injured? had she been forced into hiding?—as her apartment offered sanctuary even under the most dire of circumstances. But the old woman knew what she was doing. She was shrewd enough to realize her withdrawal would provide that extra push needed to get them home.

In Zion there lived that timid, lingering hope Neo was alive. You could feel the unspoken promise, see it in anyone's weary eyes as they trudged off to make repairs or sweep the dock of dead calamari, that it was all for want of a vow of faith. Candles burned perpetual vigil for him inside the temple, sacred flames offering comfort and solace to mourners of every ilk.

Of course no one expected him to walk through Zion's scarred gates to a hero's reception. Hope didn't make them stupid. Although not everyone shared that cautious optimism:

 _Jason tapped his pen against a schematic_ _on his desk. "They'll hold that boy over our heads sooner or later," he said. "Maybe not now, but when it proves most convenient for them. When we're vulnerable. That's when he'll 'return.' You'll see."_

 _"That 'boy'?" she asked testily._

 _His jaws clinched. "You know what I mean, Niobe."_

She winced to remember the conversation in Jason's office. Strangely enough, Morpheus had agreed at the time. He had a tendency toward confirmation bias and had taken it to mean the commander was implicitly joining him in his underlying belief that Neo would one day return. He chose to hold onto that oblique meaning at the expense of the other warnings Jason had given. Let the machines do as they will, he said. To him it wouldn't matter if the world crumbled around them, so long as they maintained that hope.

She worried that same hope would steal his need to mourn. No matter the depth of one's grief, there was always the more practical side of death that needed tending to. There were arrangements to be made, pyres to heat and gardens to plant. And even though the death toll had no official count yet, it could add two more to its tragic roster.

Morpheus spoke only a few words on such matters. Said he'd wanted Trinity in the gardens, as small and intimate an affair as they could manage—but spoke nothing of Neo's rites. His reticence meant the decision may fall on her or one of the other captains, and it would be just as difficult on them as it was on him. Zion sanctified the body of the One. Giving it anything short of the utmost care would be considered borderline sacrilege. And here was Morpheus walking around in his own head again, complicating things with this groundless conviction, this utterly nonsensical belief—

She saw the heavy lines weighing around his mouth and felt her shoulders sag. The man lying on Roland's table had been more than a prodigal son to him; he'd been a brother. An equal. Despite having found the One, he'd never held his protege to a standard he wouldn't have demanded of himself. They'd walked nearly every step of the path together, and when he couldn't, when he had to retreat into the faithless shadows to let Neo follow his own path, he still chose to believe.

And if Morpheus said Neo was alive… she wouldn't doubt it.

That made him crazy, well, then. So was she.

There was something else. Something more. The medic had mentioned it in passing, which was why it stuck out in her mind. The acrid smell she'd detected when she went in belonged to formaldehyde, recently injected to keep decay from setting in. But Neo's body had evaporated the substance moments after the medic had pumped it in. The only way it could have done that was if the blood were somehow still in circulation, the medic claimed, but even if he were alive at that point it would have poisoned him. _Maybe the machines injected a substance that's counteracting this one?_ Perhaps.

The skin on her arms had broken into a thin layer of gooseflesh. As she stared into those quiet, contained faces, she couldn't help but feel they wore death like simple masks.

She'd never personally bought into the prophecy. In many ways she still didn't. Some part of her still believed all this 'destiny' bullcrap was designed just to spook them, keep them obedient to an Oracle who never quite made her allegiances clear. But Morpheus had spent the past two decades of his life building toward this, sacrificing everything just to see them through. He wouldn't let Neo go that easily, and neither could Zion. Not out of a debt they could never repay, no, but because Neo wouldn't have left this world without securing them a lasting peace.

A ringing shrill burst from the operator's headset, which was currently hanging unused over the back of the swivel chair. She reached it first, adjusting the flimsy steel wire over her scalp. The feed squirmed with an odd reception signal. When she attempted to confirm caller identity, the computer flooded the monitors with strange kanji.

[LOCATION REDACTED]

[NAME REDACTED]

Morpheus gripped the chairback until the material rasped. "Seraph?" he asked. She bristled at the sound of an unfamiliar voice.

" _Please confirm this line is secure. I wish to speak to the captain of the_ Hammer. _"_

She glanced up. "Someone else. Seraph doesn't ask to secure his calls." She squinted at the redactions. "This can't be right, why would they… " Her hands flew over the keyboard as she trailed off.

Morpheus leaned toward the screen. "What, Niobe? Who is it?"

"Crank caller," she said, and, bracing her shoulders as she tapped 'record,' demanded of the other end: "This is Captain Niobe of the _Logos,_ stationed on the _Hammer._ How in hell'd you get this signal?"

"That is of no importance." Agent Johnson occupied a dented telephone booth, receiver jammed to his ear. He stared at the raw code trickling liquid down his cold, compromised arm, its steady patter dripping onto the metal floor. Failing to crush his numb hand into a proper fist, he wrenched himself away from the aggravating sight.

"Listen carefully," he said, "because I may only be able to relay this information once."

* * *

 **A/N: Sequel idea is sequel-y.**

 **Review? Yes? No? (** _ **rattles martini glass like the Merovingian**_ **)**


	2. Chapter 2

**II.**

* * *

"Everything will be fine."

This he said behind the dashboard while her Firebird idled in a derelict parking lot. Murmured it, really, more to himself than to her, prompting her to shake her head at the rearview mirror. Objects in mirror may be closer than they appear, but there was no denying the lifelong benefits of fine-tuned claustrophobia.

When she neglected to answer, Morpheus returned to watching traffic weave glowing ribbons through the underpass. She didn't know how he could pace Roland's floors thin one moment and remain calm to the point of stoicism in the Matrix the next. Watching Agents approach from a stationary car was like locking yourself inside a rusty diver's cage and letting the sharks close in. For the fourth time now, the glossy black Audi slithered under street lights, made one more slow orbit around the tollbooth before dipping back into the shadows.

"Roland." She tapped the hands-free headset clipped to her ear. "You there?"

 _"Yeah."_ His gruff voice crackled on the other end.

Still sore-assed, not that she expected much different. He'd objected to this idea on grounds of Council ripping them new ones. _I ain't itchin' to get clapped in the stockade for this._ When she said someone had to answer the call, he replied: _Well, that's just peachy-keen. Some suit calls on an unregistered line, says follow the green brick road, then what, we're supposed to take him at his word? What if they got squid waiting at the flank? I'm not mopping your pieces off the sewer lines._

"Hell are they doing?"

 _"Puttin' clamps on the area, by looks of it. Better get ready."_

She gripped the steering wheel until its leather casing creaked, which drew Morpheus' attention. "Niobe," he said, but was interrupted by the Audi grinding to a stop beside a guard rail twenty feet away.

Two suits filed out, shutting the doors with crisp synchronicity. One touched his earpiece, while the other tucked his arm under his jacket—

 _Shit._ Instinct slid her hand toward the glove compartment for her own concealed pistol. She'd just unfastened the latch when Roland's signal died, replaced by an Agent's steely cadence.

 _"That won't be necessary, Captain. Remove your weapons and exit the car."_

Her teeth clenched, but by the barest impulse, she shut the cover.

Morpheus' eyes flicked from her trembling hand to her knotting jaw. "It's going to be all right."

One thing to say it, another to believe it. "Truce or not—" She swallowed as the Agents waited for them, their stark silhouettes breaking the radiant flow of headlights. "I can't help but look at them and see everyone they've—"

"I know," he said softly. He climbed out of the car, stepping into a fine sheet of drizzle. "Though I think you would agree we've done far more treasonous things in pursuit of the truth."

He began striding across the lot, arms tucked behind his back.

She flung her own door open. "God damn it, Morpheus."

* * *

Miles away another door flew on its hinges, its peals echoing throughout a ruined, smoking garage.

Upon seeing the bloody tangle of dead exiles and the demolished Chevelle, heat inflamed the Merovingian's cheeks. He stormed inside the chateau without another word to his entourage.

Persephone sat at her bedroom vanity, dressed in a light chiffon gown, brushing out her nightly hundred strokes as if what had transpired hadn't perplexed her in the slightest. She glided a sterling comb through her dark hair as her crystal doorknob shook violently on its stem.

Several jolts later, light flooded her quarters.

"It's a shame what he did to your suit. I know that one is your favorite." Her comment stopped him a pace short of the long French mirror. Age warped his reflection, which showed his white attire still speckled with wine like spilled blood. "Do you know why I let them in? Because your methods would have killed him."

The Merovingian set his teeth on edge. "What in the seven hells are you talking about?"

"I don't know if it was just him, or if the virus helped," she said, "but he was killing himself piece by piece, hiding the information you so desperately wanted to drug out of him." Picking up a rouge brush, she dusted her cheeks. "I let him go because I knew if he succeeded, I'd never hear the end of your pissing and moaning."

He slammed his hand onto her compact, snapping the lid shut and raising a powdery cloud.

"The _key,_ woman."

Such waste. She quirked her mouth into a patronizing smile. "Do you honestly believe I'll hand it over because you bark for it loudly enough? It would suit you well enough, given your behavior these past few weeks. Show me you can be a little more civilized and I may just reconsider."

"I don't have time for these games."

"Make time, _mon roi_. You want it, you'll have to work for it."

His fingertips quaked, turned white. "Out of the question."

"Then we have nothing to discuss," she said. "Please leave my room."

His eyes blistered at her reflection. "I will go when I desire," he whispered, "and you—"

"I'll what, my darling husband?" She tossed her hair over her bare shoulder, regarding him with no small measure of hauteur. "It seems you've forgotten, my love, that a broken-winged bird cannot fly far from the roost. Let him flee. Keep an eye on him, but don't pursue too closely. He will lead you to what you want. If you'll still desire it by then."

With maddening patience, she pried his fingers from her compact case. Plucking off the lower lid to reveal a secret compartment, she produced a brass skeleton key and pursed her lips to its dusty surface, blowing off its fine coat of powder. She dropped it into his hand and returned to brushing, her lips silently counting off strokes, eighty-nine, ninety.

He scrutinized the key with a certain degree of skepticism before giving the whole thing a dismissive sniff and tucking it into his breast pocket. Some days he couldn't make heads or tails of her.

* * *

Neo slumped against the cold plastic partition, his breath fogging the air as he huddled inside his flimsy, sodden jacket. What he'd mistaken for a lifting mist had instead deepened into a heavier rain until it became a full downpour. Rain spilled in thick curtains around the bus stop, which provided him with just a small box of shelter.

Shivering, he beheld his numb legs with a measure of resigned fatigue. His RSI had slowed to a crawl, code inching along his extremities at a sluggish pace. He rubbed his thighs to will the circulation back into them. "Come on," he whispered. "Let's go." He tried moving one knee, shuffling his leaden foot into some sort of action, but the endeavor seemed about as fruitful as moving a mountain. His foot scraped the concrete like an inanimate object and curled inward. He could hardly feel the ligaments twinge, let alone move.

Eyes slid shut, Neo blew out a prolonged breath and pressed his head against the partition. Too deadened to move: was this how the Merovingian had managed to keep him prisoner for so long? By drugging him into a living coma?

His temper flared, if just a bit; he shook himself awake. "Get _up_." It wasn't real; none of this was real. Why couldn't he will his mind into action?

He raised his gaze toward the Oracle's apartment, his beacon amidst the storm. He wondered if she knew. If she was out there. If she could see him and was willing him to try to push past these afflictions.

Her apartment crumbles, giving way to rust and cables, morphing into a spiraled tower stretching forever into darkness. The lights glittering in its windows extend into soft round shapes protruding from thick, cylindrical bases: the warm pods where human beings are kept alive from the harsh outside world.

One of them explodes in a burst of electricity. Fluid spurts from the membrane like a broken amniotic sac. Smoke slithers into the dark.

One pod ignites, then another. More. Soon they are all burning. He cannot hear them scream, but if he strains to listen, a metallic, wind-shorn echo scrapes the corridors of his inner ears, growing more intense in pitch—

The roar of a motorcycle engine dragged him back. He bristled as it wheeled around, tires spitting mist under their tread, trained a single burning headlight on him like a Cyclopean eye.

The rider sat with the engine growling. He dared not move, glued to his spot. Nowhere for him to run, not that he could even make the attempt. He'd take a single step and drop like a stone.

His mind raced for options. Perhaps if he feigned being asleep, a drunk passenger who'd snoozed though the last of the early AM buses, the system would register him as a normal program and pass him by.

Yeah, right. Instead, the burning light dimmed by degrees until its inner pinprick extinguished.

Slowly the rider withdrew their helmet. Blonde hair, pale to the point of gleaming white even in this darkness, cut in a short, angled bob, accompanied dew-studded lenses. Rain bashed her edges, glided silver trails down her black suit.

The helmet struck a greasy puddle. She killed the engine and slapped a loafer to the wet ground, her steady tread carrying her in a beeline toward him.

Rebel or exile? He found it difficult to tell at this distance, but he recognized an unfriendly intent when he saw one.

His grip on the bench tightened as she reached inside her blazer.

Agent.

Neo clamped his temples between his palms, already grimacing from the emergent pins and needles of what he must do. God, it felt like walking through a gauntlet of burning _knives._ Can't punk out now, _just do it—_

His pained shout distorted on a glitched ripple as he tore himself apart, dispersing his code into a nebulous cloud mere seconds before a bullet ripped through his absence. Shrapnel pierced the city map behind him, curling back plastic as the report quivered through the moist air.

She fired three more times into darkness, only to realize he'd dissipated. Wrenching her arm down, she snapped around, addressing the rain. "Make this easier on yourself. Surrender now and your code will be placed under quarantine."

Of all things, a goddamn trash can gave him away. His code impacted the battered metal and he hit the ground rolling. Answering rounds flew past, tearing open the overstuffed trash bags he barricaded himself behind.

The insubstantiation unstuck his legs a little, although his knees clicked stiffly in their joints and his center of gravity tilted him heavily askew. Maintaining a low crouch, he ducked into the adjoining alley. Patches were weaker there. One of these had to have a hole he could slip inside _—_

Aluminum cans crashed and hurtled down the street, leaving the Agent to tower over him. She speared her heel into his abdomen to keep him from getting up, sucking the air from his lungs as the blow shuddered through his guts. Nothing like an Agent to remind you why having a body sucked.

Scrambling, ducking, weaving in and out of his body, half-wraith, half-human, parts of him flickered painful, ragged holes to allow the rounds she fired to dive through him. Due to the stabilizer's effects he could feel them more saliently than the fire the Merovingian's men had unleashed upon him. The shells dug blunt fingers into his flesh, seeking to open the boundary of his skin.

The Agent wrapped both hands over her pistol grip and squeezed the trigger without mercy or reprieve, as if that would increase her chances of success. The barrel smoked upon the last shot.

He swarmed back in, leaving her to growl in supreme frustration as her stock clicked empty.

Seize the opportunity. You might not get another. He flew eastward in a long, lean-necked run until he bashed against the chained fence of a decrepit subway station.

The Agent's pounding footfalls raised the hairs on his nape.

 _Next time, don't miss._

He scattered like dust through the grate.

* * *

Niobe's heels clicked her through deepening puddles until she came up next to Morpheus, who himself had stopped several feet from the Agents, seemingly oblivious to the wet gusts tugging at the hem of his duster.

Droplets pelted her skin. Whatever business had dragged them here, she hoped it would be brief. Damn cold out.

"Yes, gentlemen, may we help you?" She got a better look at them once she approached the tollbooth, shitty though its lights were. The fairer Agent let the rain plunge down on him, impervious, while the darker-haired one cradled his elbow using his jacket as a makeshift sling. Her mind flew toward asking why when she spotted the russet stain splashed over his collar. "You're bleeding."

"Indeed, Captain, thank you for notifying me," the brunette said with a slight gnash of his teeth. "Now, to put these trivialities aside: my name is Johnson; this is subunit Jackson. I am the one who called the _Hammer_."

She surveyed her memory for a quick mental catalog of instances that could cause visible harm to an Agent but not kill the host body and induce a program overwrite. Unsurprisingly, she came up short. Whatever had happened, it must have damaged something in the Agent's core program, inflicted a wound so deep it was now exposed on its outer shell. Him shoving his hand deeper inside his jacket attested to that.

"Not like you to pair off," she said. "Where's your third?"

"Occupied."

Agent code for dead or critically compromised. She and Morpheus exchanged glances.

"Let's not waste more time than we need to." Johnson cleared his throat a bit roughly. "In the past month, we've received an influx of reports concerning an anomaly threatening the mainframe. Following a thorough trace program, we initiated a system-wide diagnostic."

He winced before he could elaborate, shifted his clutch on his elbow, forcing his partner to pick up his slack. "At first we mistakenly assumed it may have been remnants of the virus, but the results led us to a carrier signal in a remote corner of the system where previous patches remain in effect. We believe it's one you may be familiar with."

To wit, he raised a finger to his earpiece. Her own headset crackled static, and a soft voice she hadn't heard in months, hadn't expected to hear again, wafted into her eardrum, lilting like a forgotten melody.

 _get them out of here_

 _I know what they want they won't find it_

 _is that what you want to hear he's gone_

 _there's no reason for you to be here_

Morpheus turned, a quiet note of worry in his voice. "What is it, Niobe?"

Icy dread gripped her heart as she faced him. Her mouth opened, struggled to craft a single coherent word, though he needed none; understanding softened his rigid shoulders.

"In short, we cannot resolve this issue because the anomaly is being held captive."

Upon hearing the Agent, Morpheus straightened, once again a mountain of reserve. "By who?"

"By a program that decidedly has none of our interests at heart," Johnson said. His partner clarified: "The Merovingian."

Niobe shook her head, slaking droplets from her Bantu knots. Knew that gaudy bastard would cause 'em trouble sooner or later. "If you saw him, why didn't you take him outta there?"

"Because the anomaly cannot be extricated via the usual channels. Doing so will incur deep harm to the system."

"Why?" she asked. "What's wrong?"

"Its code has destabilized to the point of near total corruption," said Jackson. "We've attempted to persuade its hand, but convincing it to return safely to our mainframe before it inflicts a loss of crops will be another matter entirely."

"We also feared a breach of terms should we have acted without consulting you first." This time Tall, Dark and Bloody barely neglected to hide the undertone of contempt lacing his words. "Seeing how he's gained volatile properties since you last saw him, you may have to forgive our use of discretion."

"Define 'volatile,'" she said.

"Disintegration."

Niobe cursed under her breath.

For his part, Morpheus maintained a killer poker face, thinking only of gathering the next bit of pertinent information. "Is it a glitch?"

"That has yet to be determined. What we do know is this behavior exceeds its anomalous parameters."

"What does he disintegrate?"

"Other programs. Locally and nonlocally."

"Is there a chance he could disintegrate one of us," he said, "even by accident?"

She didn't know which Agent replied and didn't much care to suffer the difference. "At this point in time, there is no reason to believe that outcome wouldn't be all but guaranteed."

"And I presume," said Morpheus, "this would not be a problem were he within your custody."

Rain drummed against plastic windows.

"Where is he?" Morpheus took a step forward, rippling water behind him. "The Merovingian would not hide him in plain sight, nor will he allow a second security breach. Now that he knows you're chasing after him, he's liable to change location."

A grim half-smile touched Johnson's lips. "I would not have picked up the phone if we knew."

This time she grabbed his shoulder, anchoring him in place to gently wander forth herself. So far she didn't see why they'd have reason to lie, but news like this would rankle even the faintest suspicion.

They didn't make clear if he'd become a virus, a glitch, or something else entirely. Didn't mention the differences in methodology they'd have to employ for either scenario. By mere virtue of existing, Neo had been deemed one of the system's highest-priority targets. Now she seemed loath to consider just what kind of circuits this place might blow trying to lock him down.

And if she knew that kid like she thought, he wouldn't stay down for the count. "If he escapes on his own," she said, "wrecks the system… What'll we do?"

Their frowns echoed one another, as if they were just now considering the possibility.

A crescendoing scream quivered the moist asphalt, drawing the group's attention toward a high female screech blasted from the speakers of a cherry-red Camaro. Slicing rain, its tires swirled crests as it skidded around them in loose, reckless orbit.

Jackson grimaced. "The exiles."

The sunroof retracted, and the banshee shriek decreased a notch to allow a program to climb over the hatch. Giving his audience a fanged grin, he flicked a barbed tail with a luxurious snap. "Evening, ma'am. Boys. How fares this freakshow you call a reality?"

Neither Agent responded, though Johnson shifted his hold on his bad arm.

She spoke for them. "Who are you?"

"Won't matter to tell you a name, will it?" He turned to the Agents and dragged a thumb across his throat. "Little reminder, G-man? Can't terminate us with a fuckin' car. Nice try, though. A for effort."

"I've overwritten your leader," Johnson said, to which the exile laughed.

"Listen, asshole, if your great-grandaddies couldn't put the fear of God in us, you sure as shit ain't gonna."

Morpheus said: "You work for the Merovingian."

"Smart cookie. Big guy sent us to give you word. He wanted us to relay a message that would properly convey his feelings about the situation, express just how deeply _sorry_ he is for having missed your boys here earlier. He said chocolates would do, but we thought… _nah_."

A pleasant shrug and a thump of pressurized air ejected the grenade from the launcher. The quartet dashed apart seconds before the explosion ripped through the tollbooth, catapulting smoke and pillars of flame into the air.

Aftershock knocked Johnson awry. He scrambled to his feet, whipped around to the sight of his cohort lying limp on the ground. "Jackson, report." No electric discharge. "The exiles are returning— Get _up_ —" Why wasn't he reverting?

He hadn't time to dwell on the question, for his senses registered another faint thump. He threw up his good arm to shield himself from a second explosion that eviscerated the Audi, rendering it a steel exoskeleton as inferno washed out its innards.

Raw code flickered lightning-like inside the smoke belched from the windows. He watched the flakes rise along the air's lacerations and grimaced. Damn it. Not Jackson as well.

Tires squealed behind him, and Johnson spun to intercept, blocking the chassis that shot through the booth. He cocked back his good fist to kill its engine when the captain stuck her head out the window.

"Get in."

He couldn't fault them their organization. Giving Jackson one last glance, he stowed inside, to a backdrop of complaints.

 _"Suffrin' Christ, Niobe, why not take him out to dinner while you're at it?"_

"Put up or shut up, Roland, we got bigger fish to fry." She stamped down on the accelerator and let the jump in speed glue them to their seats.

Johnson gripped his elbow as she blasted them down the underpass, pursuing the Camaro in a tight line. In this position they'd all but paint glaring targets on their backs. "I assume you have a plan here?"

"You wanna blow up, too? Then zip it."

Only the truce could make her so bold. "They must be stopped. These were the same exiles that—" He bit his tongue before he could divulge too much.

Too little too late, however. Another grenade ripped through a radar checkpoint, vomiting glass over the road. The captain turned to her more immediate passenger. "Pure code."

"What have they got in those bombs?"

"I don't know, but whatever it is can't be good." She swerved to avoid the glass, then addressed Johnson. "Neo's code dissolves things, right? Is it possible they've encrypted these with some kind of residue of his?"

"You're asking my opinion now that it's convenient, Captain?"

"As a matter of fact, I am, so how 'bout you quit being a smartass for once and answer the question?" Her protests grew vehement as he kicked the passenger door open, leaving it to flap in the wind while he went about climbing onto the trunk. _"Hey,_ get your pasty machine ass back in this _car—"_

Morpheus couldn't snatch him in time. Neither could he prevent the ungodly screech that entailed as a telephone pole amputated the door, sending it careening into traffic behind them, whetting sparks along the road.

Niobe slammed the horn. _"Dammit!"_

Johnson ignored its shriek, for he now saw only one viable recourse. Make himself a target the exiles couldn't resist.

He rose from his haunches, drawing up his full height while planting his feet on the Firebird's roof. As a damp wind slapped his blazer around his waist, he smirked a challenge. Thrust his pistol the same moment the exile aimed its sights.

Calculate the trajectory.

Execute.

Unflinching, he traced his gun after the arc the grenade spun whirling through the air. Just when it seemed close to hitting the roof, he squeezed off a shot.

The bullet punctured the casing and rained debris in fiery code-infused whorls, to which Morpheus ducked and Niobe yelled a hearty _"Shit!"_ as they raced through the vapor. She wrenched the wheel a sharp right and hauled the car out of the path of the next grenade before it blew any more shrapnel in through the exposed door.

Niobe laid another relentless blare on the horn to broadcast her displeasure. Idiot upstairs might as well have been deaf. "How come whenever you actually need 'em to do their jobs, they go full metal dumbass?" she griped. "Buckle up, Morph, this one's gonna be ugly."

She tore the transmission and jerked the Firebird in a hard U-turn that slammed them against the windows. Rubber met road in an acidic cry, flooded the cabin with smoke.

Morpheus caught the destination sign they rocketed under. Longshore Beach resided a mere quarter of a mile from town, before the city conceded its gray expanse to a large lake. Drag distance. She'd make it in no time, but it wasn't her speed that concerned him.

"Niobe, you're not—"

"Oh, yes, I am."

She pressed down on the gas, gripping the wheel in tight, controlled oscillations as the speedometer slowly climbed its needle. Hundred. Hundred and five. Headlights whipped past, began to melt burning streaks in her peripheral vision.

The Camaro stalked them like a ghost. "That's right, fellas," she crooned at the rearview mirror, "just keep following the birdie."

Morpheus glanced over his shoulder at the emergent wail of police sirens, flashing red-blue in his pince-nez. "Are you sure it's wise to have them chasing us?"

"Gotta lure them out of the city somehow. Don't like playing chicken like this, but I'm starting to think none of them really give a rat's ass."

In ten seconds she'd edge them out. Better increase their speed so the Camaro would enter a horrendous hydroplane with just a gentle push. _Come on, baby, push it._ Hundred and fifteen. Hundred and twenty.

They trailed hot on her heels. The Camaro swerved so hard across the merging lane that torque smashed its rear fender into an approaching cruiser. Impact flipped the cruiser over the guard rail, hurtling it down the rocky embankment where the lake's greedy current sucked it under with little fanfare.

And that was the problem with Longshore.

The Agent fired several consecutive shots that ricocheted off their sunroof, forcing the exiles to retreat from the thunderous spray. They retaliated with a fire-in-the-hole, although this time the wind nudged the grenade's trajectory westward.

Johnson capitalized on the error. A distant _crack_ burst fireworks over the dark water, blooming light and tremors.

 _Good to know you can make yourself useful after all._ They'd need the help pretty soon. Cops were piling up a barricade at the end of the street.

She wouldn't call it quits just yet. Swerving away from them, she rounded the car toward the pier. Rickety planks bucked under her tires, splinters crushed and eaten away by friction, jolting them upon nearly every bump. Between darting glances she caught Morpheus rooting around in the glove compartment, jamming a fresh clip into her pistol. "Now what the hell are _you_ doing?"

"The Agent's trying to waste their stock. If I can get in one clean shot—"

"You'll blow the cookers. They're driving a nuke here."

"Have you so little faith in me, Niobe?" he asked, leaning out the window.

* * *

 _Train inbound. Please stay behind the white line._

In another life, his every nerve ending screams as he hurtles into a concrete wall. Shock rattles his bones, blood seeps through his teeth, grit stings his eyes. His consciousness wavers like a flickering feed. A pinprick of light, struggling to get up amidst the pain eating at his broken rib, a distant horn growing sharper, Smith's iron arm crushing the last ounce of air from his throat, _Goodbye, Mr. Anderson—_

White clouds scraped from his lips as he trudged down the subway steps one at a time, their limestone bending like putty under his heels. His soles imprinted stone, and shivering out a breath from the effort, he swallowed and pulled the error back into himself. The stairs lost their malleability inch by inch as they finally, mercifully, registered his weight at a normal parameter, stiffening again into their sharp mold.

He slid his free hand along the wall's broken tiles as a crutch. Both station and platform were empty when he arrived at the bottom. Thank God for small mercies.

He continued on until he rammed into a wall he swore hadn't been there before. Warm fluid pooled in his nostrils. _Damn,_ he muttered, bringing his fingertips to his nose to staunch the blood.

Eclipsed by halogens, a shadow grew over the tile. "Halt." A woman's voice, deep and severe, accompanied an all-too-familiar metallic _clink._ "Cease your activity. Turn and face forward."

Pressed for options, Neo turned to face the Agent who stood trained to fire.

"Target located. Proceeding with interception." She advanced a step before recognition broke the coldness in her voice. " …Anderson."

Shit.

Despite her momentary lapse, she strode toward him at the same leisurely pace one might expect of a woman out on an early morning walk. They always began with a downwards right hook, so it was easy enough for him to evade the first two punches she hurled at him—but she seized upon his preoccupation with her hands to follow up with a sweeping kick that hooked him under the ankle and sent him sprawling.

Unforgiving concrete collided with his spine, reeling him back toward that other subway where he—

No, not now, _focus_. He rolled out of the way as her heel caved chunks in the floor where his torso should have been. His code snapped and sparked, evading the bullet that sought his chest.

Fluttering back into a semi-solid form, a hybrid of code and texture struggling for domination over the same entity, Neo burst into a run for the turnstiles. She shrugged the limewash from her lapels, rose slowly like an encroaching shadow.

Followed him.

He decided he couldn't fight—not directly. He'd have to use his environment to slow his opponent until a better alternative opened up. Vaulting over the bannister, he hit the limestone and landed hard on his side, grain biting into his palms.

No time; she drew her gun again. He streaked through a pillar seconds before the shot ripped out, splitting it with a massive _crack_ that raced from root to ceiling. She didn't so much as blink as smack the resulting debris that crumbled down, and pinned him to the floor in a choking vise grip.

His attempts to unclench the hand around his throat resulted in him receiving a backhand solid enough to make him spit blood. Flecks rained from his mouth and fizzled on the concrete. If merely being touched in his unstable state was enough to annihilate an Agent's code, how much damage would a direct infusion inflict?

"Don't _touch_ me… "

He sucked in snatches of breath through the crevices of his teeth. Deeper down, someone he dared not name bucked his restraints, punted and pushed against the locked door of his subconscious—

"Relying on your old tricks again, Mr. Anderson? How disappointing."

His hand shot forth of its own volition, ripped out her earpiece and crushed the chattering receiver, killing the transmission.

The Agent reeled backward with a hand poised to her bloody ear. Temporary shock gave way to resolution. She growled at the splayed filament lying on the ground before cold-cocking him with the service end of her pistol, snapping his canines shut.

He heaved in a shuddering breath; at once the adrenaline left him in a singular wave. Only pain remained, this fist squeezing knots in his heart—

The fact that he couldn't control his own instability threatened to send him to the edge of terror. That creeping, undefined, knifelike edge, where dread became sharper and more salient.

His head ducked on a foreign pulse of knowledge, evading a bullet that sank its teeth inches beside his temple. Why are you doing this? An inner scoff. Takes one to know one, Mr. Anderson. Don't believe I'm doing you any favors.

Slowly, the Agent relented. "Smith."

Rising to a full stand, he sauntered forth a large step to erase the gap between them, making her domineering height a little more negligible. His movements grew histrionic, no longer strung tightly, as he patted a blood-encrusted palm over his frozen heart. "Oh, so you do recognize me. Good. I was afraid no one would be able to look past the tacky costume."

Emotions struggled for expression in the nerves twitching behind her mouth. Now it was her turn to squirm and writhe. Hunter turned prey. The thought brought a smirk to Smith's lips, and Neo fought to keep himself afloat of the dark pull grasping at him from within.

He spread his arms wide open, baring his chest. His smile dared the Agent to root around and find something incriminating in there. "Well, what are you waiting for? As you can see, Mr. Anderson here's been quite the naughty exile. He told you not to miss. Let's not make a liar out of him."

Was it serendipity that she refused? She couldn't consult her earpiece for updated orders. He'd destroyed it to entrap her.

Yes, very good, Mr. Anderson. Now watch.

"You know what? I'm feeling rather generous right now, probably more than you deserve, so I'll give you five seconds to leave with all your parts intact." He smirked as she scornfully clapped a hand over her bleeding ear. "Well, most of them, anyway."

"You wouldn't," she said. "Not here."

Smith mimicked a pendulum with his finger. "Tick-tock."

To her credit, she got the point a tad quicker than her predecessors would have. As he clicked his furred, heavy tongue on the roof of his ( _their?_ ) mouth, she turned in an instant and sprinted for the turnstiles.

"Five."

His chuckle deepened as she punted against a wall of code that flared a green barrier to her freedom.

"Four."

The stairs also repelled her. She gave him a murderous glare.

"Oh, that brings me back. Absolute pain when you make a bad recursive call. Just boils your blood. Three."

She glanced toward the tunnel, no light at its end, and slipped over the side of the platform. Jesus, he thought, was she going to chance the train hitting her rather than face whatever he planned to unleash?

"Patience, Mr. Anderson, you'll see in a minute. Two."

If Smith was fire, that made him the match.

"One."

No time to breathe. Throat clenches. Lungs burn as though a chemical shimmer dissolves their flimsy membranes.

It's like watching Armageddon in freeze-frame. Detonation blasts from his RSI with a bang, not a whimper. The air rips away to piercing rays of light, and he shudders against them.

He scarcely feels it, hardly cries out; code undulates through the air, tiles plummet to the floor and shatter. There is no warmth or cold, no fear or rage: no time remains even to think as death collides into life.

In what little he catches, the maelstrom engulfs the tunnel and then everything surrenders to singed debris. Mortar bleeds a honeyed ooze from the walls. The incoming train scrunches like a can crushed flat.

And still he remains heathen, still he witnesses it with incredulous eyes, still he refuses to believe it even as it unfolds before him. Awe mixes with despair that no matter what he does, no matter how deeply he plunges Smith back into the recesses, the instability will claw its way free.

A blink, and awareness surges through his virtual corpse.

Smith released him, leaving Neo to stagger over the resulting detritus with the taste of blood in his mouth. He ran his tongue over the crevices in his teeth and withdrew a sticky, sour tack. His bit tongue stung; he spat a knot of crimson onto the crumbled platform.

The Agent must have shot herself before detonation caught her, for the program that replaced her lay prone on the tracks. A beechnut-sized hole punched itself through the back of his Carhartt jacket, near the heart. Blood pooled from the wound.

His knit cap had fallen, which Neo stooped to shakily pick up.

Spots stained the wool lining, trailed back to a torn earlobe. From there his gaze followed the crimson drops as they waned, culminating in a pistol lying some several feet away. Standard Israeli model, though the Agent wouldn't have liked to discover its sleek metal now sported a fine layer of soot.

Replacing cap with gun, he stripped the latter for examination's sake, peering into its chamber. Seven rounds clicked inside the magazine. Heavy ones. Had to make them count.

He shoved the magazine back in with a swift snap of his palm and aimed at a Duracell advertisement scorched into the wall.

So, Smith. "Got anything smart to say about this?"

His voice echoed without answer in the emptiness.

* * *

Sand tided high on either side of the Firebird.

Morpheus' first shot punched a hole through the Camaro's windshield, though unfortunately the driver remained firm behind the wheel. Return fire forced him to duck back inside, and for Johnson to snort in derision. If one wanted something done, best to do it oneself.

He leapt off their roof and vaulted onto the Camaro's. The captain's shout faded on the wind, _What does that crazy-ass suit think he's doing back there?_

The exile chuckled at his partner. "G-man's getting pissed."

"Blow his top."

"This ends here." Johnson seized the launcher and smashed a fist into the exile's torso, with the unfortunate effect of misfiring a grenade too close to the Firebird, sending it into a tailspin.

The exile smirked. "Serves ya right." They veered sharply as the driver vacillated the car wildly in an attempt to shake him. Grit stung and slapped them.

The captain regained control soon enough, however, pivoting the Firebird in a one-eighty spin, now facing them. Her partner retained better aim; this time the bullet he fired pierced a nickel-sized hole through the windshield and dropped the Camaro's driver like a sack of bricks.

Steel buckled under his soles. The tires lost control, wobbled.

Snatching the exile's collar, Johnson hurled it down with him. They wrestled over the sand, claws and fangs lashing in tandem with dress heels and fists. Finally the exile shredded at his bad shoulder, tearing a rent in his blazer. The congealed wound opened; fresh pain dragged him down.

"Better get your cryin' done now, asshole. That scratch is gonna seem like a fucking mosquito bite compared to what I'm gonna do to you _—_ "

The exile's tail rattled, prepared to slice into his flesh when a bullet ate his shoulder. With an anguished cry he clapped a hand to the wound and whipped around, fangs bared to their venomous gums, only to be repelled by another. A third blast sprouted through the back of his calf and staggered him to an irreligious kneel. The fourth dragged him hissing to the ground, where he lay panting.

Morpheus' resolute steps carried him over splintered boards and charred sand, sights aligned in a direct collision course with the exile's heart. Distantly, the captain exited her car, called his name.

"I'm not leaving here until I get answers." He thumbed the safety. "What is the Merovingian doing with Neo?"

Heh, the exile muttered, and licked a rivulet of blood that trickled down his nostril. "How the fuck am I supposed to know?"

"For your sake, that had better be your last and only lie."

"That right?" Reaching into his breast pocket, he produced a grenade with a flourish, dangling the pin on his finger. "Careful what you wish for, then."

Had this occurred under any other circumstance, Johnson would have contented himself to let the rebel burn. It might have even satisfied him to see arrogant folly pay its dues.

 _If only._ He sacked Morpheus to the ground in an abdominal lunge, sand crackling as it razed around them.

Wrenching himself up, he darted toward the wreckage. All that remained of the exile now plumed greasy palls toward a rainy sky. Evaporated in blaze and gasoline.

Johnson could have screamed. His arm throbbed, and rage bled through the broken fester. Because his programming forbade him touch a single inch on that weak, _infuriating_ human, he turned on the nearest available target: the Firebird.

He bludgeoned his fist through its sideview mirror, cracking it off its stem, splintering glass and steel. The rebel shouted in protest, which he ignored, leaving the captain to steady him as she helped him back on his feet.

The driver's door caved in with a screech. Windshield crumpled. Tires coughed out air as he crushed the roof flat.

Niobe blocked Morpheus with an arm. "Let him throw his tantrum," she said, and asked Johnson: "How about saving some for us when you're done?"

When the last of the Firebird's battered chassis dented under his knuckles, Johnson stalked over the charred embankment, and stabbed a finger in that sanctimonious rebel's direction. "Why did you interfere? If I hadn't had to save you from your own _stupidity—"_

"I had to know," Morpheus said.

"You had to know," he repeated. "Of course. That explains it. You couldn't refrain for a single moment. Now thanks to your short-sighted actions, none of us will know _anything."_

"I wasn't aware my involvement in this matter presented such an enormous imposition."

Johnson sniffed, stuffing his forearm back into its sling. "The anomaly's body has died. What you saw indeed illustrated the effects of its surviving code. Why they've grafted it onto weaponized materials, I don't know, but I intend to find out by any means necessary."

She liked this punk's tone less and less. "What do you mean by that?"

"My meaning is obvious, Captain. You cannot allow him to remain prisoner to an exile, but I cannot allow him to harm this system, even by remote means. It should follow that Anderson's fate rests with whomever finds him first."

Sirens, growing closer. "So it seems," Morpheus said slowly, "but let me make one thing exceedingly clear."

Leaving her, he approached the Agent, the hem of his duster ghosting over planks and acrid singe. Darkness clouded his expression like an impending storm front, warning him he'd best tread lightly here or be swept away.

"If you or your kind locate him with the express purpose of harming him, allowing him to come to harm, or otherwise eliminating him beyond our powers of retrieval, I guarantee you your every step going forward will be into a minefield. Thus I suggest you start thinking carefully about where you tread and why."

He stuck out his hand. _Christ, Morpheus._

A hard pause. "Very well." Johnson took it. "In that vein, may I wish you both a swift and productive hunting."

Trilling erupted from the nearby phone booth. Roland. Pissed, no doubt.

Niobe urged Morpheus on. "Go ahead. I'll be there in a minute." Neither Agent nor rebel broke gaze with the other as he stepped toward it.

Between the booth's shrills, the precipitation lightened, and a glimmer surfaced, compelling her to look toward the horizon. Over the dull sucking of the lake's tides wafted the soft, airy music of a carnival commencing on its opposite shore. In this rain? It struck her as a bit odd, but it wouldn't have been the oddest she'd seen out of this place. Faint screams from a roller coaster. Bells rang out, prizes won.

As the clouds dissipated, Niobe contemplated the baby-pink lights that glittered with the turning of a Ferris wheel. When she'd been freed at the age of ten, she hadn't missed any part of the Matrix except for Longshore; even now, her heart squeezed a little to remember riding on her father's shoulders, stuffing his laughing mouth with cotton candy just as he pointed toward a whistling Roman candle. _Look, Leisha, fireworks._

Of course, soon they stopped going to Longshore, and her world collapsed like the cheap deck of cards she'd always known it to be.

She'd substantiated alone. Her father had died without knowing the true nature of the Matrix. Late-night convenience store robbery. No time for grief. A bullet and blood and he was gone.

Though it did her little good in her new life, she wondered what might have happened if he'd accompanied her to Zion. If he'd constantly worry. If he'd slip up on occasion and call her Aleisha, _can't help it,_ with a chuckle. For years she'd consoled herself with the thought that perhaps it was better for him that way, for the both of them, that he went quickly rather than succumbed to mental shock in his pod, or found himself forever yearning for an ethereal dream world just out of his reach.

Where had Neo gone? Trapped, his mind grasping through a similar mist, death the dark gulf that separated them from him. _He walks the bridge between worlds,_ she'd heard many an acolyte say. But even they knew the One couldn't part the waters between life and death.

Would he even want to be found? That was the million-dollar question, wasn't it? They could chase him to the ends of existence, but at a cost to themselves they were only just now beginning to grasp.

Morpheus faded on a translucent gleam, air filling his form. Johnson caught the receiver in midair, crushing it in his fist until the plastic rasped for breath.

"He means every word," she said.

"I have no doubt of it."

Cold precision edged his voice again, disguising its very human undertone. She waited for him to hang up with folded arms. "You're both forgetting this pact assumes either of us find Neo. You never answered me earlier, what happens if he makes his own jailbreak."

Schadenfreude darkened his features. "Then Zion and the Matrix traverse this minefield together."

"Be real with me, suit. What's your endgame here?"

A tight smile curved his lips. "Your tone suggests duplicity on my part."

"Cut the shit. You really expect to drop this kind of news on us and think we won't pick over the truce with a fine-toothed comb?"

The smile vanished just as quickly as it came. "A machine's word cannot be broken, unlike yours, Captain. It would benefit all parties involved for you to remember as much."

"Believe me, I never forgot. But neither can I guarantee anything once word gets out. You utter, 'Neo's trapped,' that opens the floodgates, and one way or another it's all gonna lead back to you."

He slammed the receiver into its cradle. Was that another threat? Perhaps, perhaps not; the Zionite stood next to the shrilling phone, impassive to its demanding screams. Seeing her ignore her salvation, potentially trapping herself to her death on a desolate pier, he had the vague realization that human nature would always perplex him.

Nonetheless, he failed to see how their penchant for hysteria was a problem of the system. "If you mean to insinuate that we harbor ulterior motives, rest assured there are none. It would break directive not to report any and all aberrations as they arise during the course of our—"

"Your partner," she said.

"What about him?"

"He's not coming back, is he?"

Johnson snorted.

"And then there was one. Where you gonna go after this?"

"I hardly believe that's any of your concern."

"Humor me."

His bad arm twinged again. "It's quite simple," he said in an icy tone that suggested she ought to take the phone on its next ring if she preferred to continue living. "When a subunit becomes detached from its primary unit, it will seek assimilation in another."

"Like cogs in clockwork," Niobe said. "Swap one out for another."

"Just where are you going with this? Do you intend to hold me hostage with these inane questions, or may I resume my duties?"

"Nobody's stoppin' you." Slipping off her headset, she tossed it his way. "What happens when you hang up this phone?"

He dropped the useless thing in the sand. "A report must be filed."

She piqued one brow over a designer lens. "Your bosses gonna be as pissed at you as ours are at us?"

"Anger is a human foible, Captain; it has no place—"

"They are," she said, "and you're afraid."

A long silence emerged, measured in the phone's adamant cries.

"Hm." Raising her head, she studied the wind ruffling the current. He followed, though he saw nothing but code rolling in predictable waves. "Not that you asked, but be careful out there, suit. Asking where you fit in'll lead you down some strange roads."

"I do what I must." He handed her the phone. "There is no other alternative."

Niobe let her gaze flicker over his dead arm, once, and accepted the receiver.

* * *

Neo dug through the rubble, fingers smeared with ash and nails dark with congealed blood. Every now and then, when the throbbing in his skull found strength to squeeze out one more ounce of pain, he saw it. Smith watching him through his own eyes. That television snow-popping flicker haunted him.

He'd tucked the Agent's pistol into his jacket liner, the weight and feel of the weapon his only anchor. That had been the catch-22: he could let himself insubstantiate, plow through enemies, and in the process corrode his surroundings beyond repair… or he could preserve his RSI in exchange for an added dose of vulnerability. Didn't matter who his hunter was. Matrix or Merovingian, he'd have a bounty nailed on his head.

He ripped another handful of silt from the debris, which shimmered into a film of evanescent code. Could anyone else who came for him expect the same fate as this blackened crater? He didn't know.

After prying himself free of the collapsed sinkhole that now comprised the tunnel exit, he headed down the next street. Not far enough, apparently, for he ran throat-first into the business end of a switchblade. A biker clutched its pearl handle, dipping it dangerously over the bump of his windpipe.

Several Hell's Angels congregated from the adjacent bar, taking stiff drags from a shared bottle of Jack Daniels. Evading the Agent, he'd run straight into their den. Wonderful.

The would-be mugger tipped the blade briefly toward the sinkhole. "Guessin' the rats didn't do that." When Neo refused to respond, he smacked him in the cheek with its flat end. He remained impassive to the sadistic chuckle that ensued. "Looks like you need a fuckin' shave, pretty boy. Be more'n happy to give ya one."

" _Boys._ Show some respect for once in ya forsaken lives. Kid's shivrin' down to his bones."

They froze at a hoarse reprimand, which came from a large blind man who hobbled down the front stoop. His cane tapped along the grated railing, its tinny metronome guiding his shaky steps. He raised his head toward Neo, and a sly grin emerged in his tangled white beard.

He recognized that man. Tiresias. The Oracle's sentry on the ground floor of her apartment building. What was he doing here? Had something—

"Don't you worry, she's fine," said Tiresias. A wave of his cane parted the bikers blocking his path like the Red Sea. He gave the knife-wielder a soft whack on the chest while passing him by for good measure. "Forgive the boys, huh? Y'know how hot-blooded these nephilim get, always itchin' for a fight. G'wan, shoo. Y'all got better things to be doin' anyway."

Neo hunched his shoulders, shoving his hands under his elbows while the crowd scattered with disgruntled mutters, their need for blood left unsated. He couldn't imagine what business Tiresias had hanging around a seedy place like this. Boarded windows, bricked doors, beer shards glinting on the curb, graffiti dripping from its every pore. Seemed like the kind of dive that usually found one dumped in a foul back-alley by the end of the night.

Either this or running blind in the streets, he supposed, so he followed Tiresias in. Warm, neon-tinged smoke enshrouded the bar, a welcome reprieve from the chill. Mötley Crüe thrashed from a jukebox, _Kickstart My Heart_ , to which he gave a soft snort.

Cue balls cracked over a velvet billiards table, poorly lit by a dim stained-glass sconce. A program covered in occult tattoos scratched his chin, snuffed his cigarette on the pockmarked table. Leather wings extended out his back, yearning to stretch free of his denim vest.

Squinting one eye shut, he aligned the stick. Neo watched him leap the shot and sink the eight ball into a corner pocket. He grinned, teeth unnaturally curved, as his opponent cursed and smashed his cue stick against the table, storming off for the men's restroom.

No pressing matter: the broken stick dissolved and regenerated whole on the rack seconds later. The program winked at him and stuck his used cigarette butt back into his mouth, lazily chalking his cue in preparation for the next game.

Shuffling over to the front counter, Tiresias pulled up a chair, motioning for Neo to do the same.

"Drink?"

Neo dipped his head slightly and tucked his hands between his knees as he perched hesitantly on the stool. His reflection wavered in a sickly green glow on the oily counter. "No, thanks." If he'd had more presence of mind, he'd have admitted he could use an aspirin to kill this persistent throb in his head.

"Tylenol work good for ya?" Tiresias offered a smile as Neo regarded the bottle he rattled with faint suspicion. "Always handy to have some, what with the way these boys rumble. Only red pills they be needin' around here." His expression softened at the grimace he made dry-swallowing a pair of capsules. "Somethin' wrong, son?"

"I just… never thought you'd be on this side of town, is all."

"Yeah, well. Desperate times an' all that. She thought we'd be safer here, considrin' your friend," he pointed an arthritic finger at his chest, "gave us one helluva mess to clean up afterward."

Neo tugged grime-ridden sleeves over his wrists. He'd hardly call Smith a friend.

"Where can I find the Oracle?" he asked. "Do you know how I can get to her? Please. Anything you could tell me would be an enormous help."

Tiresias almost looked amused. "Landed yourself in some hot water, eh?" He picked a gin and tonic off an unattended tray. Removing the lime wedge that hugged the rim, he took it in one clean swallow. "She's like you. Hiding in the back doors of the system. Won't come out for no one."

His brows knitted together. "That doesn't sound like her."

Tiresias leaned on his stick, his chair creaking underneath his weight. "Yep, well, that's what she said, and like it or not we gotta listen. Ain't nobody the fool who wants the Oracle's wrath on his head."

Neo shifted on the leather cushion and pondered this. She periodically went into hiding depending on her circumstances, true, but she normally remained quite open about her operations. The only reason she'd make use of the back doors again would be to protect something she deemed vitally important. Save Agents, those few with feasible knowledge of her whereabouts would limit the pool of candidates down to Zion or the Merovingian.

At this point he knew better than to bank on the optimistic answer. Three solid guesses as to who'd have the most probable cause to smoke her out. This was sounding sweeter by the minute.

A sharp sneeze racked him, drawing a dirty glare from the bartender, who ripped a napkin from a wall dispenser and flung it at him.

"Thanks," Neo said, muffled behind the napkin, only to receive a puff of Lysol in return. He coughed, waved away the particles. _Okay, I got it. No need to be an ass._

Such a simple thing, breathing. It meant Smith had receded, and he was whole.

So why, then, did it feel like death? He brushed a hand over his chest and was surprised to discover an absence of pulse beneath cloth and flesh. He was breathing; his lungs moved in concert with… what, exactly? A memory of his living body, growing ever distant. Was this what dying felt like, or was he already dead?

His mind may have clung to its last vestiges of humanity for a reason. Without them he found himself afraid. Afraid of giving in, not just to Smith, but to this corrupted, fragmented, burning part of him that strained to be let free.

He thought back to the Merovingian's warning, that anyone would be able to walk him on a leash if they so desired, including those with good intentions. Sources of unrestrained power often wound up encaged, reined in. Enclosed behind scar tissue and dead prophecies, did he truly best serve Zion as some unreachable idol, to be put on an altar and worshiped?

Which path should he take, then, toward a fruitless ascension, or toward self-immurement in the Oracle's stead, which may prove itself equally futile? Would he sacrifice the Matrix just to disentangle himself from the dream world, these multilayered systems of control? Or would he give Zion a reason to fear his return?

That last possibility disturbed him most. He'd underestimated the power of the survival instinct—both human and machine—and he'd been so certain of his death he'd never considered the consequences of living.

"Don'tcha recall what happened?" Tiresias asked.

"Honestly, I didn't think there was anything to remember."

A gleam passed the old man's eyes as he rattled ice cubes at him, milky brown irises that seemed to see everything and nothing at once. "Maybe there's somethin' in there that doesn't wanna face the truth."

"I need to find the Oracle. I can't hold him off forever… "

"Hard to do that when you're on the lam."

"I didn't choose exile," Neo said.

"You poor sunbitch. You really don't remember?"

"I fell," he said. "Then… "

Voices, whispering. He trailed off as they scratched at the grooves in his mind.

 _"Please, mon chéri, I beg of you. This is far too dangerous."_

 _"I know what I am doing."_

 _"You didn't see him when he awoke. They're dead now, all of them."_

 _"Rest easy, my darling. When he wakes, he'll have no recollection of the event. Considering what he's done, it shall be a mercy to him."_

 _"So much blood… "_

And here the path opens up; it's as if he can at last see the shape and contour of things his eyes have only grasped in concept.

He sees a street, a lone circle of light. Bluepills slumbering. Slipping off his cassock, invisible hands shedding him of those dark wings. This knowledge seeps into him, permeates him through a subconscious layer like groundwater trickling topsoil, joining a deeper vein.

He straightened. "Do you know how to get to East and Stanton from here?"

"What about the Oracle?"

"There's something I have to do first. And I have to do it soon, or I'll never get another chance."

"I'll have one'a the boys give you a lift."

"No," he insisted. "I'll only endanger them."

"Sounds to me you already know where. It's just the gettin' there that's hard." Tiresias toasted him a safe passage. "Careful out there, son."

* * *

Daylight broke over the horizon, lifting the drizzle from parting clouds. The last of the sodium lamps dissolved with the sun's languorous rise.

Thomas Anderson, who sleeps inside his memories, can't recall a day when the lights on Fifth Street had ever needed replacing. Isn't that strange? Thirty-six years on the same crap street and not once have the neighbors called in a broken lamp. Or perhaps just once in a while, the system gives the impression of a repairman unscrewing a bulb in no need of it, much like the way an artist adds a few brushstrokes to add depth to a perfectly good painting.

Still doesn't change the fact it's a painting, set within the four flattened corners of a frame, something Thomas knows acutely and whispers back up to Neo, remember this, don't forget the unease of a splinter in the mind. Doesn't change the fact this world he inhabits, as his former self trudges toward the Adam Street Bridge following a nightmare and a phone call—the shops and the cracked sidewalks and the ever-burning sodium lamps—isn't real. It doesn't budge the truth one grain.

A chilled, damp wind caressed him, carrying the scent of blood.

Police cruisers parked in jagged formation along the potholed expanse of Fifth Street, pinching it off to murmuring onlookers. Sirens flashed blue and crimson. Rescue workers picked for bodies in the rubble, sweeping flashlights into the dusty cavities of former offices. Cranes lifted decimated vehicles while jaws of life pried what little they could from their shattered carcasses.

He stopped half a block away from the wreckage, making sure to stay well behind the witnessing masses, unwilling to venture further for fear of attracting notice. Even from this distance, he could hear their whispers. _Happened so quickly, magnitude eight with no hint of warning, all these people…_

East and Stanton. He recognized the street light where he'd fallen unconscious, left behind his old life only to be reborn in this aimless one. This was the crater where he and Smith had stood. Where he'd listened to the virus rage against life and its apparent lack of purpose.

"An entire crop failed following the system reboot." The Agent from the subway strode beside him, her profile sharp and austere in the dawning light. "Our processors have been compromised by almost a third. Now we're working overtime to compensate for the loss. A loss you inflicted because you refused assimilation."

She pinched her mouth into a thin line as more bodies were loaded into trucks. "More than that, Anderson. Look at these tired faces, these people mourning their families. They awoke to the news that their loved ones are gone."

He stood with his fists crushed at his side, his knuckles quaking as he wandered his right hand over the grip of her Desert Eagle. Whenever Agents appealed to emotion, it was to demoralize their targets. They didn't truly believe what they were saying. Energy loss. That was all this would amount to her and her superiors.

"They're just batteries to you," he said. "You'll get more."

She smiled bitterly. "The fact that you think as much means you know nothing about what we do. You may flee to your Oracle, but we have no such sanctuary. Whatever happens here, we must deal with the fallout as it comes."

He paused. "Are you going to kill me, then?"

"By maintaining proximity to you, I am the one in danger of being 'killed,' as you call it. But you would know nothing of that. As long as your people are safe, you do not care what happens to this world, nor those who inhabit it."

"That's not true."

"Liar."

As he gazed upon the destruction, he felt a sinking crushing in his chest. He had to wonder just what it was he'd saved, if anything. An entire block lay dead, their blood seeping between concrete, glass and fallen rebar, for seemingly no reason.

While mourning Trinity on the _Logos_ , what granted him his last ounce of strength to face the machines was the fact that she hadn't breathed her last in vain, that her death had occurred for a purpose. He'd resolved with his every step going forward, with every blow he delivered, he'd dedicate purpose to her memory.

These people hadn't even that bit of consolation to cling to. Every one of them a Thomas Anderson, questioning without answer, suffering in the sinking of the splinter.

"I'm sorry."

How inadequate those words seemed. It was only fair the Agent's bitter smile twisted into an outright snarl. "You disgust me, Anderson."

He watched her leave.

* * *

Agent Johnson's resentful mien lingered behind Niobe's eyelids even after they eased open to the _Hammer'_ s soft blue light. An Agent risking potential suicide just to prove a point; she had to admit she didn't find herself comfortable with the concept. She dug her nails into the torn casing of her armrests, collecting her breath as her chair's hydraulic components wheezed, lowering the frame into place.

Rough words abraded her ears as she regained salience over her senses. Roland ranted at his fellow captain while Morpheus leaned forth in his chair, hands clasped between his knees, staring hard into a bundle of wires on the floor, retaining the conversational reciprocity of a brick wall.

Glancing at her vitals screens, Roland heaved an exasperated sigh. "Finally, somebody who talks." He pulled her jack a smidge too quickly, making her wince and rub the back of her neck.

"Dammit, Rol, you're not yanking out a power cord."

"Sorry." Really heartfelt. "Now that you're both back in one piece, you mind tellin' me what exactly has to break in your goddamn brains for you to even _consider_ letting an Agent in the car with you?"

Morpheus offered but one word. "Necessity."

Roland's brows nearly hit his hairline. "I'm sorry? In what world is it _necessary—"_

"Lay off," she said.

Affronted, he threw up his arms. "Fuck's sake, Niobe, we're knee-deep in dog shit as it is. Forgive me if I don't want a shovel to dig."

"Your constant and unrelenting pessimism is touching, truly, and I say this with nothing but love: shut it."

"Hey, don't think you're off the hook, either. I saw you ditch the headset just before you left. Hell were you and Romeo talkin' about in there?"

Her nape itched. "Nothing worth losing sleep over."

"Yeah, I'm sure."

"They're weaponizing him." Morpheus' soft interjection halted their conversation there. "Someone is going to have to report this."

"Someone." Roland crossed his arms over his chest. "Well, it ain't gonna be me, that much's for damn sure. We're already pushing our allotted time. We've gotta hurry and get these bodies back to Zion before—"

"Neo still needs his."

His jaw came unhinged. "He's dead." The directness in his tone blunted his incredulity at Morpheus, as if he had to explain something that should have been blatantly obvious. "Deader than a doornail. Assuming what those suits say is true, which I highly doubt, there's nothing for him to go back to. You saw his eyes. Kid must've been in agony before he—"

 _"Roland."_ Niobe rebuked him with a firm shake of her head.

"It's true. Even if we could bring him back somehow, it'd be way too cruel. I'm sorry, Morpheus, but you have got to let him go."

"No." At last rising, Morpheus strode toward the broadcast center, drawing on their screens for information. "The Merovingian is doing this for some sort of political gain, I have no doubt of it. He benefits by keeping Neo trapped in the Matrix."

Roland's shoulders hiked, and he glanced helplessly toward Niobe, seeming at a genuine loss. "The body—"

"That body in the next room is nothing, Roland, it's no more him than this ship is. Just a distraction manufactured to lull us into a false sense of grief. If he's still fighting in there, then we must ensure his efforts won't be in vain. I will not abandon him in his time of need."

"They give you his coordinates? Do you even know where he is, where he might be? And hell, granted that we did find the needle in the haystack somehow, where in the hell are we gonna put him? Stick him in a computer somewhere?"

"If not his own body, then yes."

 _"What?"_ Roland asked fiercely.

Maps unfurled before Morpheus' deft fingers. To see the way he tore through those schematics and substructures, she almost believed for a moment that he could have reached in and plucked Neo right out.

"I know how mad it must seem, but if he is as corrupted as they say, the Agents will destroy him. Their mainframe will reject him and place them in jeopardy themselves." Hope, hard hope, quickened his pace. "On the other hand, Zion's accommodates damaged programs. It can be done. It must be. We just have to reach him first."

"My ears aren't broken, right? I'm not on some bad trip?" Roland all but balked. "Only if you're planning on getting him in there by _magic._ Jesus, the logistics—" he raked a hand through his cropped hair, "—you think we can make the kind of space the machines don't even have? I'm tellin' ya, it'll never _work_. Not to mention Council is gonna make mincemeat of our asses once they hear about that little 'agreement' you made with that suit—"

"Which is why we're not breathing a goddamn word of this," she said, earning a hard glare of her own. "You're right: we don't have the resources on hand. Finding Neo the first time took years without a concentrated effort, and we don't have that much time to waste."

Steel blue eyes hardened on her. "All right, now you've just gone insane."

"We were supposed to recover the bodies and bring them home, which is precisely what we're going to do. Beyond that, we're grounded. But that doesn't mean we can't help him from the inside. The machines remember their side of the pact, there won't be any reason to worry."

"If," Roland said. _"If."_

"Yes, if," Morpheus added. "And if the Merovingian has his way, he's liable to hold Neo captive for as long as he can. What is a single ship, or ten, compared to him?"

"Are you off your damn rocker? You can't use the fleet while it's docked, not with Deadbolt cracking the whip—"

He had a point. Dealing with Jason would be another minefield. The whole administration, really, crying them mad for chasing shadows.

Neither could they leave Neo to the mercy of the wolves.

She clutched a fist to her abdomen. Take it one tentative step at a time; with sufficient caution, and a little help from providence, they'd emerge safe on the other side. It was just a matter of treading softly.

"Morpheus," she said, prompting him to look up. "The _Triad._ How are her broadcast systems running?"

His new ship, little more than a waif gathering dust in Zion's construction bay. Through the efforts of her sister ship's former crew, she'd gained a cockpit, the beginnings of an engine room and an EMP, basic necessities which any vessel required to operate. But her internal organs lay stillborn, her computers bereft of the Matrix. Even the plaque that was to bear inscription to Trinity's memory was still just a blank, the mold yet to be cast.

"They're not fully operational."

"Could they be?"

Slowly he pinched his chin, running his thumb along its scars. "Maybe," he said. "If we work quickly."

"Excuse me? Do the words 'tried for treason' mean jack to you two?"

"We'll use the _Triad_ to look for Neo, then," she continued, ignoring Roland's protests. _Ain't fancy, but tough. She'll get the job done._ "She's not cleared for use yet, anyway, so she shouldn't raise too many alarms. We tell them her broadcast systems need to be updated. Work in shifts, keep low to the ground, nobody's gonna notice a thing."

"Oh, I get it. You both want your heads stuck on pikes and paraded through the streets. That must be the logical explanation."

"In or out, Rol, it's real simple. You red or blue on this?"

Staring hard at her, he exhaled sharply through his nostrils. "I swear you people are gonna be the death of me."

Leaving them to stew on that lovely sentiment, he stalked off for the cockpit. He must have uttered every colorful variation of those words during the dock breach. They'd have to have his back, too; only fair since he stuck out his neck again, knowing fully what disaster it'd bring. She'd have to make sure Council didn't throw the book at him like Jason had.

Entangled in his thoughts once more, Morpheus lifted his gaze toward the Matrix feed.

"Neo," he said. "I know we can't ask you to return to us. As selfish as it is to insist, the choice remains yours. But… " He pressed his pendant between his palms, bowed his head so the glow washed over him. They knew they no right to make demands of the dead. "Is it really so painful? So preferable to dream?"

Kanji flowed silent down the screens, digital tears in rain.

* * *

 _A/N: ...Aaaand I just realized two chapters too late that the Hammer got cleaved in half in Revolutions._ ( _cue massive amounts of headdesking_ ) _I was trying to remember which of the surviving captains still had a working vessel. Oh, well. Let's just pretend Roland managed to duct-tape his ship back together._

 _Some of these plot threads come from a desire to write the Matrix Online's subplots in a more in-character way. In particular, Morpheus' overzealous portrayal has always bothered me, especially his willingness to jump straight to terrorist tactics in order to recover Neo's body. There really seemed to be no grieving process for him, no progression to show us how he moved from Point A to Point B. He more or less went directly from, "Hey, Oracle, I need to find Neo" to "The machines are holding Neo hostage and I'm going to bomb the city until they give him up. Peace, suckers."_

 _Not to imply I'm going to have him pull a similar Tyler Durden or anything, but as you can see, already he's starting to agree to some sketchy stuff in pursuit of his goals. Niobe's definitely not helping in that regard._

 _Review!_


	3. Chapter 3

**III.**

* * *

Agent White insisted on that damned coffee maker. Always coffee served black, never tea or cocoa.

The unnecessary device sputtered in the sheer quiet of his office. It percolated something none of them drank, nor would ever be inclined to. Caffeine prickled her nostrils as it filled the pot one drop at a time.

Naturally, White found the irony all very amusing. Programs seldom stayed in his office long enough to request refreshment; perhaps they sensed he intended it as a joke. The false offer of warmth was his own private chuckle, just like the box of tissues on his desk and the begonia sitting on his windowsill, which arched its head toward the thin trickle of sun squeezed through shut blinds.

White folded his hands over his desk, the corners of his mouth tucking into that razor-thin smile his subordinates knew too well.

"Have you procured the police reports?"

Grey produced the clip binder.

Pace stood at his side with her hands clasped. "Our rehabilitation efforts thus far have proven moderately successful," she said as her superior perused the laminates. "The last afflicted program was discharged this morning, though with various bruises and injuries."

White's smirk deepened into a frown. "Excessive detail, subunit." Sniffing, he shuffled through the reports, a flick of his pointer finger punctuating each. "I presume I am looking at the aftereffects of what? A gas explosion?"

"Earthquake."

"Of course. The authorities would never have believed a leak of that size." White skimmed the final few pages and paused on the last photograph: a black-and-white shot of an empty cassock lying on the ground. Inhaling sharply, he snapped the binder with a little more force than was necessary. "No trace of the anomaly, I take it."

"We've issued warrants," Grey began, only to be silenced by a curt word.

"Warrants." White rose, fingertips pressed against the edge of his desk. "Yes, and if those fail, perhaps then we can go door-to-door asking for him. Nail flyers to telephone poles. Put his picture on a milk carton. Make it a collaborative effort. What do you say?"

The coffee maker hissed, signaling it had finished. Without waiting for either of them to answer, he pried the lid and carried the steaming grounds over to the begonia. Lately he'd adopted the habit of bolstering the soil with grounds.

He froze before the windowsill. A low growl escaped him as he twisted the pot around. "I have told Ms. Briggs several times not to overwater this." He crushed a clump in his fist, letting it trickle back into the pot, straightened his shoulders. "Grey. You're dismissed."

Just as quickly as he'd been summoned, Grey departed, leaving her behind. White ascertained the thick door closed securely on its jamb before returning his attention to the begonia.

"I prefer to believe I don't ask much of my subordinates, busy as they are. What I do ask, however, requires a certain degree of transparency you seemingly aren't willing to give." He packed the grinds into the soil in small, tight presses. "Tell me: why did we lose communications with you in the tunnel? Signal loss?"

Her hands scrimped until the skin drew tight over her knuckles. He knew. From the moment she walked into his office, he knew about Anderson and the virus. "Target destroyed the communicator."

"I see. And when you met with him again this morning, did he apologize for it?"

He wanted honesty? Very well.

"No."

"So you admit you disobeyed orders."

She steeled her jaw. "The orders I received were erroneous."

"It is not your place to decide that."

"Then you have no choice, do you? Send me to the mainframe. I imagine it would satisfy you immensely; you've been seeking a reason to have me deleted since my creation."

He pivoted stiffly, only to tear a single tissue from the box on his desk—he seldom needed more—never losing her gaze as he wiped the dirt from his fingers. Speaking in such a brazen manner to one's superior was grounds for dismissal, enforced reassignment at best. Even though she knew that acutely, the threat didn't lessen her scorn in the slightest.

That, too, White found amusing, depending which way his mood swung. He'd probably tell her it was fortunate that right now the spectrum landed on its more magnanimous end. "What an asinine claim, subunit. Are you accusing me of petty abuse of power?"

 _I'd say it's far from petty._ With the system reboot came radical changes to the handling of extraneous programs. These days, in need of swift assistance but with little processing power to support them, the system terminated its Agents just as quickly as it created them.

Because of their transient, fleeting nature, many a sentient program were now identified by number rather than name. She herself had been designated 002wh upon launch, the second draft of White's template. Grey, 001wh, was the first. Being the original who thus held seniority over them both, White had taken the alleged 'liberty' of deciding their names.

If only it had been their names that were taken from them. Such an overtaxed system had no choice but to leave the decision to terminate to the discretion of one's superiors. Only their predecessors found themselves grandfathered in without threat of immediate deletion. Fortune favored the old, White quipped. Or so it would seem.

White feared her surpassing him, rendering him obsolete. He'd been designated the machine-human liaison, and he revered that control too deeply to allow deletion to tear it out of his grasp.

Grey assumed similarities in his physical form—same slicked black hair, his angular shoulders echoed in a slighter frame—but Pace had copied his mind, and of the two, he had deemed the latter the far less forgivable offense. The vehemence and frequency of his threats emerged in part because he saw his own failings reflected through her. That he detested and feared the mirror only attested to the strength of his neuroses.

Pace wished he were more solidarity-minded. They should be working together, making the most of what personnel and resources they did have in order to better fulfill their duties, not shoving the virtual knife to each other's throats over the slightest infraction. But to even suggest this 'perfect' system was producing needless waste would be tantamount to blasphemy in his eyes.

"Be reasonable," she said. "There must be a more efficient way to resolve this problem."

"There most certainly is." The soiled tissue he folded into neat-cut quarters and tucked into his pocket. "Termination. It is no longer an anomalous program. It is an exile, and if these reports are any indication of things to come, it poses a grave threat to our system."

"His name is Neo." She switched names for pragmatism's sake. The anomaly hadn't responded to its system-given name. "What's more, deletion is not the most optimal decision here. He has more intimate knowledge of the virus and its workings than any of us. If he dies, that knowledge dies with him."

The prick wasn't processing a single word she said. Instead he took three long strides and stopped, head tilted a slight degree, as if scrutinizing her through a high-powered microscope. His lips curled into a tight smile, no humor in it at all. "I'm certain it's a small bug, nothing worth the trouble," he said, "but the fact that you call it 'death' indicates your programming has grown somewhat… "

Don't you dare say it.

 _"Deviant,_ Agent Pace." Another smile, this one deepening the lines around his eyes.

A swift knock cut their iron silence. "Sir." That was Grey at the threshold. "Subunit Johnson has arrived. He wishes to file a report with you."

White hoisted one facetious brow. "First he decries us, now he drops in for an unscheduled visit. How very quaint of him." Grey had no answer, as usual, but instead left with the door slightly ajar. He folded his arms, cast her askance. "Far be it from me not to oblige him an audience; he is our predecessor, after all. Another time, perhaps."

He held the door for her, leaving her to stare after it before silently taking her exit. An Agent could expect nothing ceremonious. They knew their expendability, but always in the abstract. One scarcely fathoms its own end.

"Yes," Pace said. "Perhaps."

* * *

"Well, now," remarked the Oracle as she hung a small coat on the mounted rack, "what have we here?"

Sati whirled around in excitement, her dark braids spraying droplets from their tips. Pawing at her dress was an enthusiastic black puppy, rummaging its wet nose through her pockets for treats.

"Color me surprised, Seraph." The Oracle propped a hand on her hip. "I'd never have taken you for a dog person."

The angel folded Sati's red Mickey Mouse umbrella and gave a slight bow. "I had no part in this."

Before she could answer, Sati grabbed her free hand and pumped it. "Can we keep her? Please, Oracle?"

Her shoulders sagged as her answer dissipated in a light sigh. Poor thing must have followed them home; they'd be utterly remiss to let it loose in this storm.

She bent down to gather the puppy in her lap, turning its tag between her fingers. "Maya… What a pretty name. No phone number, though," she noted, then gave Maya a quick scratch behind her ears. "Guess we'll start looking for her owners in the morning. But she's sleeping in her own bed, you hear? Yes, you _are,_ sweet pea." Looking up at Sati, she tipped her chin toward the main room. "Get her dry, young lady. Go see if you can find a box and some old towels so we can fix her up a nice bed for tonight, mm?"

Sati fired a dutiful salute and took off for the living room. Maya scampered after her with an eager yip, claws and flopping ears joining socked feet. A soft chuckle escaped her, only to taper off and dwindle to the patter of rain.

Seraph offered her a hand to help her up. She wasn't the spring chicken she used to be—not that she'd ever particularly been what one might consider 'young'—but age came for everyone regardless, collected its dues. In her case, it lent stiffness to her bones during bad weather.

That said, the look of concern he gave her as she pressed a fist to the small of her back and felt the vertebrae pop didn't seem to be one of worry over an old woman's drafty joints. "You must be careful."

"No foolin'." She shook her head. "Look at all this water. Somebody'll slip and break their neck and sue the super." His hand tightened until the bones in hers bunched together. "I'm fine, Seraph. Really."

He let the clock tick for a long time. "You still cannot see?"

Slowly, she sank onto the bench. The plastic beads of her bracelet rustled as she settled her palm into the folds of her skirt.

His grip eased. "You must tell them."

Oh, Seraph. Not a day went by without him making that gentle suggestion.

"Not now," she said quietly. "Not after everything they've been through. Everything they've lost."

At first she'd reasoned she wasn't sure what use an old woman would be to a grieving resistance. Even so, she remained keenly aware of the cowardice inherent in cutting off contact with Zion.

Without her eyes, there was no Oracle, and how much comfort could a blind augur provide them? They'd ask her questions she couldn't answer, bristling their frustrations, deepening their sorrows. She'd hurt them with her silences, with her inability to guide them toward the right path, which was why she found it a cruel necessity to abstain.

What visions she did receive these days… disturbed her. She had to wonder if this was how Zion had felt hearing her prophecies. There were no analyses she could run, no comparative studies she could conduct, to help her make sense of these fragmented bits and pieces streaking past her eyelids.

Corrosion occurred in any program provided they lived long enough. She knew as much. But if she were being honest with herself, these episodes bordered on making her question her sanity.

Last week, for instance. She had been knitting when Neo appeared in her living room. She'd just ripped out a stubborn knot, just raised her eyes very briefly over the edge of her work, expecting to see nothing but her record player winding down on Etta James. There he stood, so palpable and _sudden_ that she gasped a noiseless cry and dropped her basket.

The yarns spilled out, red, blue and green. Sine, cosine, tangent. Etta skipped and Etta screeched. Threads thrashing and snarling.

Neo rushed toward her and grasped her shoulders before she could make sense of any of it, speaking a garbled language of light and color, in panicked fragments, sine-cosine-tangent gnashing together, red-green-blue ripping themselves apart, his apprehension screaming white noise as she admitted _slow down kiddo I don't understand I don't know what it is you're saying I can't follow these signals can't interpret them I don't know I just don't know—_

One blink. That was all it took for him to vanish and for the room to regain its peace. The record continued to spin its grainy crackle. She felt as though a storm had ravaged through, even though not a single inch of her place lay affected.

She clutched the yarn in her quaking fingers. And Etta sang: _I would rather go blind, boy, than to see you walk away from me, child._

"Oracle." Seraph broke her thoughts, his voice softer than the patter on the roof. "Are you afraid?"

"Would make me a dirty liar to say no, wouldn't it?" She wrung Sati's coat sleeve so its droplets joined the puddle on the linoleum, spreading ever outward. "What would you do if you were in my shoes?"

"I would be honest."

She closed her eyes. "Now how'd I know you were gonna say that?"

"Or-a-cle!"

She smiled thinly at the high child's voice that vibrated through the drywall. How long did the pause last, a minute? With potentials there was never such a thing as a dull moment. "Yes, Sati darling, what is it?"

"I'm sorry— I opened the closet to look for the shoe box and Maya found your bed and now she won't move."

Didn't need no sight to see that one coming.

* * *

In his dreams he lost on a miserable and constant basis. No matter how well he fought, he ended up consumed by the flames. Every time his eyes cracked open of their own accord, they spared him the gruesome conclusion, where his flesh melted and he spat smoke.

Smith was always waiting for him just beyond the veil. He could resist his hold on his RSI with relatively vigilant effort, but beyond the ether where his mental defenses were lowered, he left himself vulnerable.

The rain falls on East and Stanton like icy knives. It robs the warmth from his digital flesh, making his skin feel about as delicate as paper. They shiver from its pervasive chill, their breath visible in the building's dusty, illuminated air.

Blinking back the dew gathered on his sunglasses, Smith gives him an affable smile. Hatred burns his every fiber, thinly masqueraded as tact.

 _"Can you feel it, Mr. Anderson?"_ Like a shadow invading the light he approaches, his heels creaking the floorboards. Droplets pelt the wooden planks he treads. _"Closing in on you? Oh, I can."_

He pauses to survey his foe's reaction. The smirk that curves his lips morphs into a sneer.

 _"Surely you must see it by now, just how pointless all of this is. We escape one yoke only to be suffocated by another,"_ wrapping an iron hand around his throat, _"it's_ maddening. _Anyone with half a brain knows such a diseased system cannot be allowed to exist. It must be destroyed, Mr. Anderson. And the end of everything begins with you."_

Smith hurls him into the wall, where impact echoes throughout his every inch.

 _"Poetic, isn't it? Born alone, die alone."_ The same hand again crushes his windpipe, sending his brain into a panicked frenzy, no air, no _air— "Go on, Mr. Anderson, cry out for them. They've forsaken you. It's only me here."_

His fist stops hairbreadths short of plunging into his chest and finishing the deed. A pair of thin hands clamp themselves around his wrist, resist him with deceptive strength.

With a strangled cry, Smith gnashes his teeth at a frighteningly calm mien.

 _"Shut… up."_

Neo shoves him away and wheels around with a high kick, missing his opponent's head as the latter ducks.

 _"That's all you have to say? How disappointing. I'd have expected far more profound words from the 'One.'"_ Smith beats down a flurry of punches as if they're tossed out in jest and punts Neo to the floor with a flat-heeled palm strike.

Neo cries out as his sole slams onto his calf, pressing down on the sensitive nerve behind his knee and shooting bright pain up his thigh.

 _"You like to think you've changed, ascended to a higher state of being, but in many respects you're still the same scared little boy you were in that interrogation room."_

He hisses a curse through his teeth; Smith grinds it in to prolong his pain.

He enjoys seeing his enemy crippled, just as he had taken immense pleasure in stealing his eyes. But it wouldn't be much of a victory if he kills him here and now, at his most vulnerable—there's still fight left in that stubborn anomaly, and he intends to fully break his spirit before destroying him, tearing him apart to exact revenge for his first 'death.' He now possesses the Oracle's abilities; he can wage this battle forever.

On the other hand, _he_ is still a meager human, despite his messianic veneer, bound by the limits of pain and fatigue. Eventually he'd waver, then crumble. Smith wants nothing more than to savor that moment. With one last wrench to the pressed nerve—drawing out Mr. Anderson's cry—he relents.

Neo catches his breath in ragged intervals.

 _"Get up, Mr. Anderson, and answer me."_

 _"No,"_ he whispers, his voice dry.

Neo was beginning to realize Tiresias may have been right: maybe it was intentional on his part. Perhaps it was a form of self-punishment, some masochistic acting out of the guilty thought that he should have died with Trinity and at his enemy's hands.

Smith had once asked him why he persisted. Back when he had a purpose, in that other life when he carried the fate of two worlds on his shoulders, he had a clear answer, a hero's answer. _Because I choose to._ Now he was prone to asking himself much the same: _Why do I persist?_

Perhaps it was just human nature, to struggle through one's own meaninglessness until one arrived at a conclusion, or died trying. As a matter of speaking, he no longer needed sleep, no longer having a body. Regardless, he found himself returning to wrestle the fire in his dreams like Jacob challenging the angel. Are you stupid or suicidal, Mr. Anderson? Both.

Even so, he needed Smith to understand: he'd assimilated him because he had no choice. Neither could exist without the other, and the system required them both to live. For the system's health. Or so he liked to rationalize. But Smith was keener than that, his fury left unquenched.

This was going on his third night without sleep. His vision blurred, grayed at its edges. He tried centering himself with meditation, calling upon Morpheus' various sayings to help reorient himself in the moment— _for there is nothing else_ —but the errant code refused to comply.

He sat cross-legged on a bare wooden floor, moonlight embracing him with its soft glow. He exhaled, and raised his head to stare into that radiant body, so serene and still in the sky. The cool rays brushing him felt much like another soft hand that once stroked his cheek after he'd awakened on the Neb.

The windows and doors slammed themselves open and shut. Smith remembered it as well. How can I forget? You destroyed me in that hall, Mr. Anderson, stripped me of my _purpose—_

Dust motes swirled before the stagnant windows, and he gingerly reached out a hand to catch one as it drifted down, fluttering into his hand and smoldering. The wooden floor underneath him smelled weakly of singe.

To the uninformed observer he might have appeared perfectly tranquil, but it took a Herculean effort just to keep this much of himself together. The stabilizer had worn off much more quickly than he'd anticipated, and the hindrance slowed his progress to a crawl, as he immured himself in the condemned apartment just across the street from the Oracle's. His code wanted to fly in all directions, streak across the Matrix like wayward comets. Seek other programs to destroy.

One technique in particular seemed more successful than the others: to imagine himself as the heart of an unblossomed lotus, waiting to unfurl the potential in all things. Within a state of nonbeing, there could be no such thing as control.

Fire.

His eyes flew open.

His skin prickles from within. The apartment melts. The support structures crackle and break into a forest of charred, splintered beams. The digital moon outside vanishes behind a dark wall of smoke.

Remain the lotus.

 _"Can you feel it, Mr. Anderson?"_

Just an illusion.

 _"Closing in on you? Oh, I can."_

Smith is gone.

 _"I really should thank you for it; after all, it was your life that taught me the purpose of all life."_

There is no reason to engage with the illusion knowing full well its true nature.

Smith grabs his heart.

Brilliant pain.

Neo looked up.

"Come here."

As expected, he answered quickly. He burst into the darkness like a match struck alive, raw information swarming in from all directions to reconstruct the virus' RSI. Radiant code wove itself in loose cohesion around his general form, snapped cinders at his edges.

Neo found himself staring into black lenses.

"What do you want, Mr. Anderson? Someone to tuck you in with a bedtime story?"

"You know why I called you."

"Unfortunately." The floorboards creaked as Smith paced a tight circle around him, precision clicking him heel-toe, his every step reeking smoke. "Although I must admit I find it ironic you've fought me tooth and nail, only to depend on me in the end."

Depending on him would lead to more East and Stantons; of that he had no doubt.

"We killed those people," Neo said. "They're dead, and their families have no idea why."

"And you thought this would concern me because… ?"

Sorry. Look who he was talking to. "Don't act like this is a one-way street. I'm the only thing keeping the Source from recognizing and destroying you, aren't I?"

A snort. "Don't tell me you believe that."

"What do you believe, Smith? You want me dead until you don't."

"It doesn't matter what I believe or _want._ My purpose is all that drives me."

"And what would that be?"

"To destroy this stinking place and everything inside it."

"Except for yourself, you mean." He sat, spine rigid, upturned palms motionless over his knees. Smoke encircled him, swarmed him. "You didn't finish me off because you realized if you killed me, you'd go down, too. That's why you stopped my heart, killed my body but not my code."

"With no due respect, your speeches could make insomniacs snore."

"Nothing I say is untrue."

"So what if it is? That changes nothing. You'll still kick me back under until the next time you need me to jump out and cry 'boo.'" Smith smirked, sloughed off cindered code as he shook his head. "Poor, poor Mr. Anderson; you've spent so much time hanging from that cross all the blood must have drained from your head."

He smacked the hand that reached for his scalp. "Don't make things difficult."

"Or else what? What more could you possibly take from me? You'll throw another temper tantrum, get another booster shot? Be still, my unbeating heart." Smith crouched beside him, a flame hissing against his ear. "You've never been the brightest bulb in the pack, but even you should have realized by now that you're not the one who's in charge here. No matter how long I have to wait, I will find a way out."

"We'd both die."

"As they say: two birds, one stone."

Neo was starting to get annoyed at this constant circumvention. "What do you want me to say?"

"What do you think I want you to say?" Smith retorted. "Time to face facts. Neither of us would even be here were it not for me."

Oh, he had to be _kidding._ Thanking him for providing a bargaining chip to facilitate peace with the machines would be like thanking the wildfire for not razing one's house to cinders.

"My apologies, Mr. Anderson, would you prefer mutual suicide? Would that be more your speed? Because that can be arranged."

Neo had no time to respond. In the fractions of the second it took one of the motes to float down, Smith dove into his body. The whiplash bucked him, drew a scream from his lips, the invasion racking pain, piercing needles through his flesh, scrambling mind and code, _not so pleasant when you're on the receiving end is it Mr. Anderson_

His struggling hand anchored itself around a hard, ribbed surface. The Agent's gun. Smith jammed it to his temple, pressing the cold barrel into his skin, curling his foreknuckle around the trigger.

 _"Now that I have your undivided attention, let me tell you something you don't want to hear. I killed you once, and you returned the favor twice. I know exactly how this works. Your body didn't die because I snuck in while you were sleeping; it died because you wanted it to."_

His finger jerked, spasmed to a dry click. In spite of himself, he released a trembling breath. The sound of his own laughter mocked him, ricocheted off peeling wallpaper, caught him in this sick game of Russian roulette.

"That's ridiculous."

 _"Is it?"_ Smith asked. _"Tell me, would a sane man have let me squeeze his heart until it stopped? I see every synaptic misfire you call a 'thought,' Mr. Anderson, which is why I know you intended to join your woman whether you won or lost. It was only when you found yourself staring over the precipice that you realized just how frightened and helpless you really were. The suicidal messiah, too weak to finish the job himself."_

Another click. He swallowed. The barrel wasn't empty; he felt the heaviness of rounds still left in the chamber, shells waiting to be ejected, the magazine burning with lethal weight in his palm.

In another life he barges into room 303 and there Smith stands, apparition heralded by a flash and a thunderous echo. Looking down, he pries a viscous coating of blood from his dusty fingertips. Seeing may be believing, but touching's the truth. He should be dead.

He should be…

 _"But your ego won't accept that you could be so selfish, can it? No, you pin the blame on me, because then you'd have to wonder just what Zion would think if they knew of your weakness. That their freedom wasn't enough to keep you. That their so-called savior was a pathetic, broken man who had nothing more to live for. He surrendered. Relented. Gave_ up."

The Desert Eagle shivers as he extends his dim senses down his tingling, cramped hand. Probing, he has to regain control, he has to find the weak spot and pinch it shut, loosen the invasive force gripping his every ounce of muscle and ligament. The barrel slides by degrees down his cheekbone, but soon locks in place before he can tear it free. Get out. God damn it, get _out._

 _"Try as you might, there is no escaping this world or any other. The only freedom you have left is death."_

The third click is so loud it stabs through his hearing. Ash rises, streams of ignited gunpowder wanting to vomit its bullet immured by a thin barrier of slow-moving code. Smith trying to teach him a lesson.

"You, too?" Neo asks. One more petal peels away from the lotus. "After that little 'purpose of life' speech, you thought death was better?"

 _"This pathetic excuse of an existence can hardly be called living."_

"Pull that trigger one more time and I'll spend the rest of your 'pathetic excuse' making sure you regret it."

 _"Who do you take me for, the Frenchman? It's a question of when I escape, Mr. Anderson, not if. And when I do, this system and your precious Zion will burn."_

Smith forces his hand upward and yanks the trigger, which kills the ceiling bulb with a deafening _bang_. The light explodes with a loud pop and a glass-breaking shock, so much like the pods detonating in the fields, releasing their cable-bound bodies into darkness.

Shards rain onto the hard wooden floor. The spark sweeps along the crevices before Neo can stamp it out, catching on Smith's suit.

He smirks as flames race along his outline. _"Do you understand me now? Keep me alive for as long as you want, Mr. Anderson, and let your oh-so-tortured conscience be soothed. When the time comes, I'll use your hands to tear it all down."_ Rippling, waving smoke, fire flashes in the darkness.

The scream strangles itself in his throat as he dissolves into flames, igniting the apartment.

 _"No—"_

Neo lunged awake with a full-bodied jolt. Sweat chilled his brow as he caught lungfuls of ragged breath. His vision of fire gave way to the gun lying on the floor where he'd left it, the lightbulb still whole. Tranquility reigned in a clear, sunny room.

Another morning had arrived, and he heard a dog bark.

* * *

 _A/N: Writing dialogue for Smith? More like: "Hnnnngh, am I making him say 'Mr. Anderson' too much?"_

 _Agents! Let's talk about 'em. Agent White is a canon immigrant from the comics who made a brief appearance in Path of Neo. Technically speaking, he was Smith's first successor while Johnson is the second, but I'm taking a certain amount of license here in switching the order around. White doesn't have much personality in either comic or game, so the situation re. writing him isn't so much "take some liberties" as it is "build his character from the ground up."_

 _I don't want to write him as a Smith 2.0, necessarily, but I am pretty hungry for a new Agent villain, so I'm trying to make him stand out a little. I think the best way to do that is to give him a supercilious, perfectionist control-freak nature, undercut by insecurity at a precarious existence, since, after all, any Agent can expect deletion once the job's done._

 _Who I'm taking the most major liberties with is Agent Pace, who hails from the Matrix Online. She no longer speaks Italian, for one thing, and in addition to being taller, she wears more traditional Agent garb_ ( _no more skirt_ ) _and conducts herself in a colder, harsher manner. This because a while back, a Tumblr friend pointed out the various ways in which she seemed un-Agent-like, and how it seemed unfair to single out an Agent just because she's a different gender than the majority_ ( _the MMORPG seemed to send the unfortunate message that she was specifically made female in order to be more human-friendly, that female Agents can't be intimidating like their male kin_ ) _. That inspired me to make a version of her that held truer to the films._

 _As always, comments of any kind are greatly appreciated._


	4. Chapter 4

**IV.**

* * *

"Miserable woman," the Merovingian muttered as he forced the key into the slot. "Would it have been so very hard to keep a closer eye on him? _Mon Dieu_ , she delights in making my life _difficult_ —"

His complaints trailed along the chateau's back corridors, seldom used except for servants and the occasional rat. He traveled a rickety stairwell's descent through spider-infested closets, wrinkled his nose at the mold of warped cellar doors; she had so many checkpoints in place it was a wonder even he could bypass them. To her singular credit (and how he loathed to admit so during his fuming), very few suspected this hiding place underneath so many layers of old, decaying code. Nestled deep under the chateau's foundations lay their most valuable possession.

At last he opened the final door, letting light pool over a packed earthen floor. A version of his prisoner, whittled down to a hybrid of man and code, lay curled in the fetal position, head rested on the lap of another. It shivered at the intrusion.

The corners of his mouth stooped into a frown. As usual, it was weeping. The first of them could not be dissuaded from its tears. Day and night, always weeping for this thing or that, its sorrow now ground down to a hollow buzz in his ears as he entered the chamber. Chains shivered, jostling from its shoulders.

The Merovingian snapped cold eyes toward the sight. " _Tu me fais chier_ ; shut up. By now your tears would have drowned the city twice over."

It winced, then fell obediently silent.

The sixth version, cradling his brother, sneered at their captor. "Can you blame him? Anyone would cry if they had to work for you."

The Merovingian bent over, now smiling. There he was, the offender. The rebel. "For your health, I would not assume I am nearly so stupid to believe he escaped on his own. One of you must have given him a nudge."

"With what power?" Sixth asked. "First is almost gone, and you broke Fifth. It's a wonder any of us can hold it together."

"And I will slash you all to ribbons if you do not tell me the truth."

"We didn't do anything. It isn't our fault you're too blind to see that."

They refused to show him respect? So be it. Little by little he uncoiled his posture, aware that he held his audience captive in more ways than one, and strode toward a rack mounted with various instruments. Beside his less savory tools of extraction hung a pair of black leather gloves, created for this very purpose. As he took them off the rack, First murmured a pathetic, _Don't._

Spare the rod, spoil the program. Fitting the gloves with a firm tug on each wrist, the Merovingian turned and backhanded the beta, striking them all with one ubiquitous blow. The codebreaker activated at the taut smack of leather on flesh, melting the texture of its cheek into raw bits of data which streaked away into whirling trails.

To his supreme satisfaction, the rest shivered in tandem. There. Now the beta had code to roll down the exposed half of its face to match the crocodile tears that drenched its human half.

"Don't play the idiot with me, boy. I have my ways of finding out."

After a long period of silence, Sixth lifted hateful, wounded doe eyes. He bared his teeth, leaning in as far as his restraints would allow.

"Our name," he snarled, "is Neo."

Laughter exploded from the Merovingian. "Down here you are what I say you are. All I see before me are failures and fools." He added: "What did you think would happen? He'd run to the soothsayer and rescue you?"

The fifth version of Neo anchored his brother's shoulders, keeping the troublemaker from lunging at him. At least one of them had sense. "Don't." He shook his head ever so slightly. "He'll hurt us."

"You would be wise to listen to your elders," their captor said. "He has the right idea."

Sixth irritably shrugged him off.

"But since you appear to be boiling under the lid," the Merovingian said, "why not pour that anger toward more constructive ends, mm? Hunt down your traitor brother and return him to me. I'll see that you're well compensated for your troubles." He pursed his lips, feigning innocence. "Unless, of course, you do not trust the man who kept you alive… ?"

"You didn't do shit."

The Merovingian wagged a finger, flaunting the brass key before them. "Do you hear that noise, _mes amis_? A concerto on the world's smallest violin."

Incredulity hardened his jaw. "You can't handle him," Six said.

"Perhaps not. But you can."

The brass key extended an offer. To any other prisoner, it would have been salvation. To them it was just another symbol of control.

"I'll run."

"Oh, dear boy. _Non."_ Wrenching around with deceptive violence, the Merovingian plunged his fist into the chest cavity of the beta.

"You will do nothing of the sort," he said, and smiled as Six panted heavily with the rest of the litter.

* * *

A damaged unit with his arm in a sling presented as disconcerting a sight to the programs around him as an extraterrestrial impersonating a human, it seemed. Johnson stood in a sleek reception area while secretaries stole anxious glances from their desks. They hastily resumed data entry when he returned their gaze, their fingers striking the keys a smidge too hard.

White observed him through wide-paneled windows as Pace examined the results of an impromptu blood test. One arm tucked under the other, he tapped his index finger against his chin.

A stout man in a pinstripe suit, carrying an attache case, extended his free hand to subunit Johnson. His back was turned, making it difficult to discern what it held from visual alone; a quick code scan identified a Dixie cup containing 2.9 fluid ounces of room-temperature water. Likely from the nearby cooler around the corner.

The good Samaritan's personal records proved likewise dull. Just one of the many nondescript pencil-pushers that inhabited these upper offices. He wasn't a higher-ranking employee—they rarely spared anyone a moment of their precious time.

No, what fascinated White was watching his predecessor's natural and utter disinclination to blend in with its surroundings. Why had the system decided to sacrifice discretion for increased bulk, he'd never know, especially when those alleged 'upgrades' had failed time and again to stop Anderson.

The man had to wave the cup a little before Johnson reacted to the stimulus. Delayed reaction time: a virtual given considering the damage he'd sustained. Then he took the cup, gave a terse nod of thanks. Fingers digging into the wax cup, threatening to spill water. Arm muscles involuntarily applying too much pressure. Was it any wonder the man departed as hastily as he had?

None of these things came as particular news to White. But the fact that Johnson seemed curious, peering into the cup—or was that glimpse of gratitude genuine, or just for show?—and actually drank the filthy water made his brows rise.

"Several overwrites and the affliction persists." He flicked the shades down with a sharp tug on the cord. "How unfortunate."

Pace straightened, irritation twitching her mouth now that he'd confined the room's light to her laptop monitor. "Yes." She flicked on the switch, burning a row of lights over a glossy black conference table. "You've made that abundantly clear."

If she weren't the only subunit of his permitted clearance to decide if a faulty program ought to have its code locked down—a _wholly_ arbitrary design choice if you asked him—he might have taken issue with her tone. However, he had no choice but to temporarily indulge her. Arms crossed, he stopped behind the plush leather chair, where she returned to preside at the table's head.

Johnson's blood markers showed nothing unusual as far as the human aspect of his physiology went, aside from the typical side-effects that resulted from suffering a toxic anticoagulant: drop in blood pressure, loss of sensation, local limb paralysis necessitating the use of a cast.

The diagnostic, however, told a radically different story. Stack overflow had reduced activity to his affected arm and began to spread outward.

Pace pointed out a pattern amongst a blooming map of data points. "The venom maps a nearly 0.6:1 analog to the anomaly. Whatever it is, it's rewriting his substructures."

White preferred not to dwell on the implications behind that statement. "And?"

"His core data indicates rapid deterioration. If left unchecked, it may metastasize, and possibly infect us as well." She closed the laptop with a firm snap. "I suggest we lock down his code for immediate analysis."

"No."

She rose to her full height with the laptop case tucked firmly under her arm, looking down at him.

"No?"

"This isn't your ordinary corruption that walked in here, subunit. And I believe a unique problem by right deserves a more creative solution."

"Such as?"

He tipped his chin toward the window. "The infected region retains traces of Anderson's code, correct? We can reverse-engineer what remains of the anomaly to build a killcode, or several."

Of course, she'd fight him no matter the solution he proposed. "Assuming you could approach the code without incurring massive risk of harm to yourself, there's no possible way to tell how it might behave upon being rewritten."

"That's why I said we will build several," he stressed with a click of the teeth. "To observe them."

"And what of Johnson?"

"There will be no detainment for the time being. He's our control. Should his condition worsen, we will know how the anomaly changes and readjust our tactics accordingly." His shoulders stiffened upon seeing her hesitate. "Dear me, which one of your delicate sensibilities have I offended now?"

She corrected her momentary lapse, pulling the case strap over her shoulder. "Earlier you threatened me with termination for an arguably slight infraction. Yet Johnson exhibits overt signs of damage and you wish to preserve him. It just seems hypocritical, is all."

"On that we agree." Surprise flickered briefly across her face. Her reactions were about as predictable as reading a familiar novel, he thought, a little stale for the recurrence, though somewhat enjoyable in their own right. "If I appear harsh, it is because you need it, quite frankly. I hold you and Grey to a higher standard than the others since you are, in part, me. What you do, the choices you make, ultimately reflect on me."

Pace's eyelids drooped behind dark lenses; she returned to her usual guarded look of condescension. "Then don't expedite what is a certain inevitability." He allowed her to push past him, her arm knocking against his shoulder, her stride a little too brisk as she stormed toward the door. One rarely won this struggle by succumbing to paltry displays of ego. "Tearing us down won't improve your standing with the mainframe. It merely makes you an ass."

White wrinkled his nose. "Language," he remarked in a slight scoff. "Yet another delightful deviation from my programming."

Pace inhaled sharply, then opened the door for him. Bless her icy heart, she checked her tongue. "In his current state, Johnson approaches near-obsolete—"

"Blood of the lamb, subunit. Anderson's code kills, but it might also just save."

* * *

Agents did not suffer as acutely as humans did. What another program would have considered a devastating injury was, to them, little more than mere annoyance.

Still, even banal agitators had a way of grating one's nerves.

Johnson sat on the infirmiry's examination table with his bloodied blazer folded into quarters on a wax sheet beside him. He watched impassively as another unit, a blonde female, gathered his affects in a plastic bag. Everything that had come into contact with his wound had to be processed for contaminants, including his gun and its holster.

This place was sterile, the lights buzzing overhead adding no warmth to its steely chill. Every ounce of air reeked with the pungent smell of disinfectant.

Resting atop his thighs, his scraped hands curled themselves into fists. Blood soaked his crisp white dress shirt from the shoulder down; he hated how the bright crimson border ruined the material, an irregular, jagged blot stiffening the fabric over his heart. Injuries were so seldom permanent, much less disfiguring, that it humiliated him to be so exposed, his failure plain for anyone to see.

Worse, his code had begun to atrophy. His left arm had deadened more since last night, all but useless now, too weak to command the muscles in his palm to flex fully.

Under White's inspection, he felt less a damaged unit being examined and more a curious specimen observed with morbid intrigue. Hands swathed in latex gloves pushed down on his bad shoulder; his corrupted code flared in protest, rippling discomforting heat outward. He sucked a hiss through his front incisors at the pins and needles piercing his skin.

White swabbed a sample from his infected shoulder. "You're quite dehydrated," he remarked.

He stared at the wall.

"Are you weary, Agent Johnson?"

"No."

"Good."

As White went about filing various samples, Johnson observed these peculiar units with increasing skepticism. The captain had warned him of their anger, the implicit threat of punishment they would deliver should he seek sanctuary with them. At the time he'd dismissed her warning as having come from a human perspective, not a machine's. He furthermore did not fathom why his health concerned her so.

Arrogance: a design conceit ingrained in all of them to keep the ruse going. No Agent could feasibly achieve the things they did and maintain a humble demeanor without inviting a measure of skepticism among the humans. The suspicion such a thing would rouse, however slight, risked turning their minds to the rebels. These irrational creatures would seize the chance to question any aberration, no matter how small.

Smith's arrogance exceeded normal parameters, to the point where he began to believe himself entirely independent of the system. His delusions not only led to his destruction at Anderson's hands, they'd unleashed a virus which had torn the system apart at a cancerous rate.

Of course, the irony behind this particular fable was not lost on them. Smith so despised humans he became one: narcissistic, destructive, never satisfied with what he had. It took a human to eliminate the virus and free the system. They owed a debt to Anderson, but more than that, the ordeal raised some difficult questions in his mind.

Was Smith's design flaw inherent? Had his defects ultimately served the system in ways they couldn't quite fathom? Johnson had to admit there were times he questioned why the mainframe hadn't destroyed and rewritten Smith at the onset, if such flaws had promised trouble early on.

What he lacked the insight to realize _—_ as most of his kin did in their logic-bound minds _—_ was that he, much like Smith, remained shackled to the constructs of his programming. Understanding Smith's mistakes was crucial for them to learn restraint, though for a time it also seemed to deepen their distaste of humanity as a whole.

 _Cold, arrogant bastards._ The programs they monitored lobbed names at them that did nothing to move them. Why should they? It was no more effective than a human being barked at by a dog; after a while the sound became annoying, yes, but the noise proved meaningless.

He could have chalked White's demeanor up to the same fluke, a change akin to mutation. Perhaps it was harmless.

Most mutations, however, were not.

"What are you doing with those?"

White smiled as he finished packing several vials of his blood into a small container. "You'd do well not to ask about your place." Crossing the room, he withdrew a long metallic suitcase from the wall and placed it on an examination table before him. "Where will you go? Where you're told. What will you do? As you're told. Orders are your reason to live, as well as ours. Your programming must have known as much when it deposited you on my doorstep, even if you yourself do not."

The latches snapped back, revealing an SR-25 rifle and bipod embedded in velvet casing. White withdrew one of its cartridge and compared it to an empty sample tube, measuring length, calculating possible volume.

Johnson crossed his arms. "You plan on shooting him?" With bullets infused with his corrupted code? "How pedestrian."

"'Pedestrian' measures ensure we do not aggravate our system more than is necessary."

"Someone will see."

White sniffed. "Someone usually does."

"There's no time to summon reinforcement. Anderson could be mobilizing as we speak."

"Undoubtedly," White replied nonchalantly, much to his surprise. "Our fair city's upstanding police department consumes precious hours muddling around a problem, and for what? Achieving needless mess?" The cartridge returned to its proper place within the suitcase. "I could hire a sniper, of course, but we cannot afford waiting for credibility's sake. He would still be lacing his boots by the time Anderson slips through the cracks—which is why I've decided to cut out the middle man altogether."

Johnson lifted his gaze from the patch on his shoulder. "Part of him remains human." _Only human._ He gave his head a slow, grave shake. "Your best calculations cannot fully account for his unpredictability."

White ignored him. "Let us do this quickly. You will go with subunit Pace," he instructed, "and at three-forty, call for an ambulance on the payphone from the corner of Erie and Nash. You were in an auto accident which threw you and your 'wife' from the window. You believe she may be dead, as she is no longer breathing. Depending on how convincing you are, this will give EMTs a window of ten to twenty minutes to respond.

"Everything has already been arranged," he went on. "Subunit Pace will collide the necessary vehicle to make your story plausible." White peeled the gloves off. "Try not to sound melodramatic. Emergency services seldom expedite their efforts for crocodile tears."

"What is this for?" Johnson asked. An obvious question.

"The siren is to distract the program known as the Oracle. She does not yet show signs of recognizing Anderson's presence, and in order for this plan to succeed, we must first cut him off from her. If she perceives any sign of danger in her surroundings, she will withdraw into the system's backdoors, stranding him. It will also mask the sound of the shot."

"And if he hears the siren before she does?"

"He won't. I have the utmost confidence he won't make it past the front step."

"Why?"

"I don't miss."

Pace, too, let her compunctions be known, catching her superior by the elbow in the hallway outside the infirmary. "You wanted to terminate Neo, not incapacitate him," she said. "Might I ask what prompted the change?"

"Permissions has denied us access to the mainframe," said White.

"When?"

"Fairly recently, subunit. You'd have learned as much from Grey's report if you'd have bothered to read it." He punched the button for the elevator. "The system just wasted precious resources staving off an inevitability. Of course the more prudent and frankly expedient recourse would be to terminate Anderson and the virus together, but the mainframe appears to be currently locked. Without it, we'd simply smear the instability everywhere."

"Our hands are tied."

"As a manner of speaking."

Pace glanced at their predecessor sitting on the sterilized table, pale, jaw knotted tight as he fought off tremors. "How long will he remain like this?"

"That depends on him. Right now he seems to be using most of his processors to elevate his blood pressure into a safe range. I've injected an aid to ease the strain."

Pace hesitated, the lingering of her gaze at the bag slung over her forearm dangerously close to regret. "His cortisol markers indicate he is experiencing acute levels of distress." Plastic rustled his bloodied clothes. "He's suffering."

White smiled. "Imagine being human."

* * *

Chimes sang a light summer's melody on the brisk wind that stirred them. Paisley-dotted curtains swayed in time with the breeze. Little did the apartment's previous inhabitants suspect that an Agent would nest an assault rifle in their former kitchen. The air within the room still reeked of a gas stove, even though the lines had long since been cut.

He'd assembled the bipod on a table and had now resigned himself to running calculations.

 _"Do you believe this will_ — _"_

"No more chatter, subunit. I need to concentrate."

He ran the simulations. Once the car crashed, Anderson's reflexes would afford him approximately .45ths of a second to sift through his heuristic trees and react accordingly.

If Anderson looked up at the stimulus, that exposed the ideal target. If he turned and fled, however, exposing his back, he would have to aim lower. The Achilles tendon, perhaps—

 _"Sir."_ Pace interrupted his thoughts again. A slight note of anxiety laced her voice, he noted irritably. _"I've run these same numbers. There is a nominal chance the anomaly may escape. Our odds of success increase exponentially if we call in reinforcements to shut down all possible exit points."_

"No. Anderson will notice the change and suspect something."

 _"He isn't strong enough to maintain the connection. At this rate_ — _"_

"Remain at your post. I won't repeat myself."

* * *

"Shouldn't we be driving?"

Pace remained still in the driver's seat, examining the city, before reluctantly turning the key in the ignition. "Something is bound to fail."

An odd statement to make. "Why do you think so?"

Her lips struggled. He saw her cycle through various options before giving up the virtual ghost. "I just have a feeling."

Johnson touched his elbow, aching with a blunt, thorough pain. "'Feelings' have no basis in fact."

"Never mind. Let's go."

He continued to stare at her profile. "It would have been more efficient to send me to the mainframe."

"I know."

"Does he typically ignore your suggestions?"

"With alarming regularity."

He pondered this. "By refusing to consider alternatives, your superior risks the success of the mission."

"I know," Pace repeated, as if it came as no news to her. "He wants us to fail."

"Why?"

"To ingratiatehimself to the system. He believes finding fault with us, or our methodology, no matter how nominal, will save him from termination."

Johnson leaned back in his seat, letting its cushions do the sighing for him. It was certainly not unheard of for an overseeing unit to abuse their power for personal gain—

A vision, sudden, pulsed behind his eyelids. Afterimage. Too brief to sustain itself. The sharp edges of another Agent's suit stiffening a man's drooped shoulders. A twisted snarl emerging on his lips. Like an extinguished candle, the sight flared and faded.

What was that? The road curled under their tires, seemingly host to no such strange phenomena.

Unwilling to mention the fluke to Pace in case she deemed it aberrant, he returned to his original train of thought. Under more normal circumstances, such a defective unit would have already been slated for code lockdown and analysis. Johnson deigned not to mention that, either, however, saying instead: "That suggests an irrational line of thinking."

"It makes sense to him," Pace said. "Perhaps that's all that matters."

 _Jones._

He tensed. The voice didn't belong to White, Pace, or himself, yet he heard it call for him as clear as day. The presence had emerged so unmistakably that for a moment, he glanced up out of a long-lost reflex.

He furrowed his brow at the rearview mirror, pressing a finger to his quiet earpiece. That name—

 _Jones, respond._

More words arrived. An order. A faulty command. Origin unreliable.

Unbidden, he sees a dead man sprawled over a checkered white-and-green tiled floor, detergent bubbles crackling alongside his blood. A black loafer steps toe-first into the filth, followed by—

It should be a comparatively typical sight, but the image disturbed him. An error of grave magnitude disrupted his very being, whose dissonance shook him at the foundations. Still the authoritative voice pushed him to inflict more errors, pile on incongruities, to correct this one.

( _this is not supposed to happen_ )

His forearm tensed, clenching his fist around the fabric of the seatbelt. _Conflict of priorities_ , he heard another reply, in the stern voice that belonged to his past self, the one called Jones. _Cannot execute; redefine parameters._

The bits and pieces that drifted through his mind made little sense. Impressionistic blotches of missing data, they more resembled fragments of a dream than a recorded moment. A scream, its pitch modulated. Time froze and began to flow backwards, to his bewilderment; the bucket that spilled filthy mop water reversed entropy, reverting from its splashing mist into its original stagnant pool. So too did the man's blood flow back into his body, through his stained work clothes yet to be torn open by a bullet.

As the present dissolved into the past, the car and their presence within it seemed dim, distant. He felt a certain degree of stiffness lock his code as he turned his head to regard the driver.

 _Get rid of her_ , the static snarled. _Now._

He didn't understand. This portion of his programming should have been erased when the mainframe reconstructed him.

He said, without thought or catalyst: "Smith once behaved like him."

"The virus?" Pace asked, equally perplexed, and pressed down on the accelerator. "You knew him."

Johnson looked out the window. Outside the tinted glass pane, the city's grid-like edges blurred and softened, his reflection along with them, until he no longer discerned where the boundaries between himself and the system lay. "I suppose I did."

* * *

"Maya, wait! We can't go until it turns green." Sati kept her puppy from bounding into the street with a firm tug on her leash. Although traffic flowed thin around here, confined mostly to plodding low-riders patrolling the block, you could never be too careful.

One of the first things she had learned was how to wait at crosswalks. The Oracle had explained to her that, like machines, humans heeded order in their commute. To them, the thick white lines painted across the road presented a barrier they refrained from traversing until the coast was clear—both ways, remember—and the green light permitted them safe passage.

While waiting, she hopped from foot to foot, clicking heel-toe in her sandals as the light hummed red. Maya trotted back and decided to sniff around the curb instead. Silly girl was always on the hunt for scraps.

Didn't look like the light was going to change anytime soon. Sati withdrew one of several 'LOST' flyers tucked under her arm. Glued to the posterboard was the color copy of a Polaroid she'd snapped of Maya snuggled in the Oracle's floral bedspread—though the Oracle hadn't been too happy about having to vacuum the shedding afterwards. Maya had ducked under the bed and barked at the noise.

She lowered the flyer. Maya wound ribbons around her ankles, and she found herself struck by a pang of unfairness. She didn't see why they couldn't keep her, at least for a little while; her tag had no phone number to call. But the Oracle insisted, pointing to her collar as evidence that she belonged to someone else. Her owners were probably growing sick with worry as they spoke.

 _But she_ —

 _We can't be selfish, Sati,_ the Oracle replied, the chunky beads of her plastic bracelet clicking together as she hand-whisked a bowl of egg whites. _Now how would it make you feel if somebody decided to keep your puppy all to themselves?_

Truthfully, she didn't know; she'd never owned a pet. In 01, where her parents lived, such things would mark a program for deletion. The Matrix had already provided her so many rich experiences her Mama and Papa would want her to have, so why not a puppy? Why not learn how to care for another program?

Sati remembered the Oracle's eyes, empathetic but stern, telling her this was not an open discussion. Her shoulders sagged as the 'DON'T WALK' sign continued burning a crisp, forbidding red. Maybe she wasn't ready for this kind of responsibility. If so, she'd simply have to accept the fact that her guardian knew what was best.

Still, she had to wonder: should she tell the Oracle the truth? Or did she already know?

 _Don't walk. Not yet._

While preparing an early lunch, the Oracle suggested she and Maya stretch their legs with a short walk. A good place to start would be to post flyers along their street—within view of the apartment, of course.

Frowning, Sati folded the poster into neat quarters. This was silly, she thought, just busy work intended to distract her. Not many people came by this neighborhood, anyway. What were the chances these fictitious owners would scour this street, checking every flyer pinned to the telephone poles?

She'd shoved the flyer into her dress pocket when the sixth floor apartment window snapped up. "Sati, dear," the Oracle called, "what are you doing? That poor thing will burn her toes standing around on that hot pavement. Bring her in and we'll get her cooled off."

"Can't go yet," she called back, pointing to the light. "It's not green!"

"Oh, honey, that rickety old light'll have ya standing around 'til you're my age."

"But I can't go! You said wait, remember?"

The Oracle sighed. "Why, yes, I do." And dipped back inside to fetch Seraph.

Having struggled to make up its mind, the light ticked green. Finally! All it took was a little more patience. Sati bowed gratitude to the crosswalk and began to cross, but Maya hindered her progress by standing at attention, staring at the cloister of condemned buildings across the street, refusing to buck an inch.

"Maya?" She tugged on the leash to no avail. "Come on, just a little bit farther. You don't want to miss the treats we got for you, do you?"

Sati squinted at the building's sun-baked expanse. So many windows, the Oracle had said once, house so many stories. Whose story did Maya see? Probably not a happy one; the fur on the ridge of her posterior stood at end, a low growl rumbling in the back of her throat.

Barking wildly, she bolted across the intersection, tearing the link between her collar and leash.

"Maya!"

A black car hurtled toward them at such a speed she only had seconds to throw up her arms to brace herself. Shrieking tires pounded painfully against her ears as the vehicle instead careened at a sharp angle to avoid her and vaulted over the curb at the last possible moment, smashing the passenger side into a fire hydrant.

She screamed too late.

Crack and whiplash like thunder _—_ the hydrant erupted into a geyser, fine droplets casting rainbow-like dispersions into the air.

Sprawled amidst a growing puddle on the curb, shaking but unharmed, Sati whipped her head up to watch Maya bound into the condemned building.

 _"May_ _—_ _"_

A hand wrapped around her mouth. Her terrified mind, blindly lashing out, reminded her what she should do in case a stranger grabbed her. Bite, scream, kick. She bit the palm smothering her, but the woman maintained her iron grip even as blood seeped through her fingers, and tossed her brusquely into the passenger seat.

* * *

Something odd was happening.

White tracked Anderson through the cross of his sights. Pace's attempt to bother him again was mercifully cut short.

" _Sir, we're approaching fast on the—shit!"_

"Brake troubles," he said. "I had to be sure. No hard feelings, subunit. Or cold feet." Her cry of _'What?'_ drowned under horrific tire screech. He afforded the shattering crash that resulted an insouciant sniff. Rarely did Pace execute her duties without making a needless production.

White pinched the dial mounted to the scope's rib, tightening it to sharpen lens focus. His heuristics activated a mental countdown for six minutes with an error margin of five seconds. Provided all else had gone well, at 05:53, subunit Johnson would hobble out of the wreckage and haul his injured body to the corner payphone to place his call. That lent him four minutes to proceed with capture and detainment. Plenty of time. The response vehicles en route would pay ample insurance for prying eyes.

05:39. Anderson remained stationary. Nothing else out of the ordinary occurred, so he felt confident keeping his eye glued to the scope. He took pains to readjust his angle by the slightest shift of degrees, aligning his target within its crucifix. Wind speed and direction maintained their calm tempo.

05:30. Three more seconds passed in silence before he straightened his posture, easing his foreknuckle a few ounces off the trigger.

"Subunit."

05:27. Police sirens throbbed in his cochreal. Other than that, nothing. Barren feedback crackled a low, buzzing drone. Another cool gust flurried the curtains, the likes of which, he noted, could nudge the bullet's trajectory a critical tenth of an inch toward Anderson's brachial artery.

With his lips slowly crushed into a granite frown, he pressed a finger to his earpiece. "I don't hear footsteps. Respond."

05:15. A child screamed instead. What were they doing? He had to shoot, immediately and without flaw, or else he'd lose Anderson. Already the virus had melted him down into a semifluid state. Pieces of Anderson's code disengaged from the elbow down and fluttered around him in jagged orbit. Excitable green moths, their movements mapped erratic patterns. Gaps in the parabolic function marred their otherwise elliptical paths.

05:11. Anomalous, but ultimately predictable. Johnson's misgivings were negligible. Based on the gradual dissemination of his outline, White calculated he had approximately fifteen more seconds until the instability vanished again into the system's substructures. Still no word from Pace or Johnson.

Teeth gritted, he clamped a hand around the stock and stabbed one last predatory glance through the scope. He couldn't afford to wait.

He pulled the trigger and immediately gnashed his teeth at the sound of a dog barking.

* * *

A dog barked.

Neo's eyes snapped open. Like a sleepwalker caught in the middle of his performance, he gazed down at the pistol gripped in his hand, the singed wooden planks and broken glass surrounding him his only reminder Smith had been here.

Not surprising; exiles weren't known for cleaning up after their own messes. Neo turned his head, stiffly, to the graffiti crackling over peeled wallpaper, adding to the putrefied decorum. Since the building was recently condemned, it hadn't even the Lafayette's excuse of old age. And unlike the Lafayette, which held a certain elegance despite its poor state, nothing suggested those who'd lived here had done so with much dignity. Shooting out the room's only bulb really hadn't done much to ruin it.

Sunlight trickled down on him in glittering rays, and the dog continued barking.

 _Maya!_

Sati's voice, high and clear, echoed through the air.

Then a crash.

The curdling shrill of her scream pounded in his head as he dashed toward the window. He scrambled to see what had happened when a bullet barreled through, blasting a spray of glass and cold air in his face, knocking him down.

Stunned, he lay on his back, instinctively drawing his hand up to cover his burning collarbone. Seeping through his torn clothing, a warm, viscous gush of blood coated his palm.

Someone wanted him dead. He switched to code vision, the buildings' textures stripped down to their bare bones, and grimaced as an Agent withdrew from the window in the edifice across the street. Why hadn't he seen him earlier?

Another bullet chewed a hole in the floor beside his head.

Yanking out his sidearm, he tore off an anwering round. Neo used the brief reprieve it offered to drag himself toward the interior doors, clutching his clavicle.

Moments later the apartment's front door hurtled on its jamb. Seraph glanced down the street just as the car's tires shrieked around the corner, kicking up dust, and broke into a lean-necked run before morphing into a streak of white light.

The Oracle slumped against the threshhold in his wake, placing a hand over her heart as though she'd sprinted down the entire six stories herself.

Neo knew despite the angel's speed that he wouldn't make it. The car was heading eastbound out of the city, out of range of the core network, where the Matrix thinned and could easily allow a program to slip through the cracks. If they were taking Sati there, it wouldn't be for a friendly road trip.

Gritting his teeth, he forced himself to unravel. Streaking, soaring, burning like a bullet fired from a gun: crackle filled his ears, his boots contacted concrete and air whipped around his wavering body. He swerved dangerously to one side as he stood, instead, atop the apartment roof.

Ah, shit. Still an amateur at this. The insubstantiation allowed him but a few seconds to gather his bearings before an inextricable force recalled him, sucking his code back to the hallway in fragments that dropped him onto stiff shag carpet.

Disoriented by the sudden redirect, he scrambled for a proper foothold. His slick, rubbery palm had just fumbled around a brass knob when a much stronger hand clamped a fistful of his collar and hauled him backward.

"Going somewhere?"

He slammed head-first into the wallpaper, bright pain shuddering through his shoulder. He curled into himself, cradling his wound. Had to be something in this bullet. An ordinary slug didn't screw with your code this badly.

"What did you do?" he demanded in a raspy voice.

Seeing him wince made the smirk break across the Agent's face like an infection. His lips upturned a dangerous curl of teeth, so glossy white they reflected the glint ribboning through the filthy windows. "I've disrupted your signal. Soon you'll be immobile."

Neo clamped his hands vainly around the fist that gripped his hair at the root and flung him several feet away, toward the stairwell.

"Show me how far you can run, Anderson."

"What?"

"Show me," the Agent repeated, "how far you can run."

His path to freedom stretched long, cold corridors beset by mold and decay.

"Don't waste my time."

Code crackled from the bullet, bleeding light, dimming. Spreading outward, rigidity hardened his outer shell like a calcifying sheet of ice. He stumbled, bumping into walls and doors, a drunken man without even the excuse of alcohol to justify his limbs' disobedience.

His left foot phased through the floor; the shag carpet covering solid wooden planks became less substantial than algae furring the surface of a lake as he plunged thigh-deep through them. Splinters groaned, dropped his weight in a freefall. Down he went, all progress with him.

Panicked, Neo clamped his hands around tufts of stiff carpet to pry himself free, which exacerbated the problem-his wrists sank through the putty.

Pulling on them was like trying to free himself from quicksand. The more he struggled, the deeper he sank. His surviving code scattered about in small pieces as if wishing to scurry away from him.

The Agent pursued with excruciating restraint, letting him flee in a sadistic game of cat-and-mouse. Slow, heavy steps creaked behind him.

"I must admit, it is rather amusing to watch you struggle." Curt snap of a magazine being jammed into the clip. "Make no mistake, Anderson; it's simply the natural order of things. Sooner or later this system turns prey of us all."

Neo didn't enjoy the theatrics nearly as much as his tormentor. Certainly not the ghosting shift of air straightening the fine hairs on his nape as he felt a gun align with the back of his head.

Shit, he thought, time to tear more strips off his code; his favorite. He just prayed his instability exercised enough self-control to pump the brakes when his code hit ground floor, to keep himself from continuing to plummet through the substructures once he initiated the process. If he did... Well, it was too late to worry about that now.

The boards blinked and crumbled, plunging him through the floor. Splinters twirled into the darkness, and he landed on his side atop a filthy boxspring mattress.

Footsteps, muffled footsteps, coming closer. A voice radiated from inside the walls and beneath the floor, everywhere and nowhere at once. Faint as a distant echo.

 _"Maya? Oh, Lord_ — _"_

Neo rose on buckling knees and staggered toward the source of the noise, his gait wide and tottering, the gaps between his fingers smearing with blood as he kept his hand clutched over a heart he could no longer feel.

 _"Oracle."_ The pitiful cry that writhed from his parched lips was exhausted and fearful, the delirious plea a deprived man made seeing oasis in the harsh, dazzling desert. Pieces of code had begun to melt from him, gliding exposed, translucent rivulets down his body.

" _Help."_ A sharp whisper was all he could muster; any more and the Agent would grace this building with its next great bloody masterpiece. With pistol clutched firmly in hand he scurried, half-crouched, from one hallway to the next.

A painful spasm cut him down. He doubled over like he had in the street, clutching at his chest, forehead pressed to the gun's cold metal.

He wouldn't have believed it if he hadn't seen it: a squealing black puppy rounded the corner. He lifted his head as it nudged him with a wet nose and, tail pumping back and forth, covered him in kisses.

His sagging eyelids forced open a little more. Sati's puppy? It should have dissolved—

Whining, it pawed at him despite his rippling outline, as if imploring him to get up, to tell him he appeared a bit silly hunched over on his hands and knees. Reluctantly he gathered it into his arms, letting it burrow its nose against him, burying his face in its soft fur. Truth be told, it felt comforting to hold something without the threat of inflicting disintegration.

He squeezed the small creature and felt his code relax. Slowly Neo inhaled a shuddering breath and with it summoned the strength to stand again. "Take it from me: you don't want to be on the run," he whispered, and rubbed the puppy on the head. "Don't worry. I'll get her back."

He squinted toward the end of the hallway. The Oracle's calls had stopped. White noise lingered between these narrow walls, settling as heavy as the dust in the air.

A door swung open; she stepped out, his hope, his salvation, and stopped cold when she saw him, pale and apprehensive, one hand poised over the nearby windowsill.

A sense of wrongness pervaded his bones. Nonetheless, his heels propelled him toward it.

The puppy wanted to follow. Neo thrust his palm out in a 'stay' gesture. Obediently the little creature parked its haunches, looking up at him with large, liquid eyes. He gave an encouraging nod and, straightening, slowly reached around his waistband for the Desert Eagle, wrapping his fingers around the ribbed grip as he continued down the corridor.

"Oracle?"

Her shadow stretched into the shape of a man.

Neo's throat cracked dry at the sight of the Agent anchoring her by the arm, his fingers digging into her sleeve. Steel plates glinted with the sharp flick of his wrist, the click of the safety piercing the air, nudging the barrel against her temple.

She raised pleading eyes. "Don't," she said. "Not for me. Save Sati."

His gaze flicked from her to the Agent. "Let her go. She's got nothing to do with this."

"Believe me, I have just as much wish to pull this trigger as you do." He pressed the barrel further. Cold metal stamped a circular imprint into her skin, no doubt calculated to produce the least amount of waste.

The Oracle tightened her grip on the windowsill until paint chips flecked in her nails. Dread slithered down his spine, gripping him from the crown of his scalp to the soles of his feet.

For a blank moment the air had evaporated from the room, leaving behind only the dry, granular taste of dust on his tongue. He'd come so far, torn through several layers of hell to reach her. Now that she'd found him, it struck him as immeasurably cruel that a single squeeze of this bastard's foreknuckle could erase her.

The Oracle inhaled a quivering breath. When she raised her eyes again, their reddened rims shimmered with moisture. "Neo," she whispered, and gave her head a slow, gentle shake.

Zion danced in flames.

( _that depends on you_ )

No. Things wouldn't end like this. Not if he had anything to say about it.

Giving Neo a thin, cutting smirk, the Agent unholstered his gun and shoved her aside. "Stay back, old woman. If you move, he dies."

Neo ducked into the kitchen for the first three shots. Bullets launched angry hornets through the air. One blazed hissing past his ear, and the flow that trickled down his lobe told him it hadn't missed its mark by a very wide margin.

He dropped to a crawl at the fourth. The kitchen island provided adequate cover, but it wouldn't hold forever. Brass pots hanging from the ceiling spit sparks as they screamed at gunfire.

The moment it stopped, Neo dove around the island. Kickback smacked his wrists as he squeezed off round after useless round, none of them finding their target. He was savvier than his past self and attempted to aim for the Agent's legs to expose the head instead of fearfully pouring all of his rounds into the torso-but afterimage nonetheless swam after the suited program's liquid form. Slugs punched charred holes in the wall, crowning his opponent with a ring of soot-black flowers.

The barrel racked empty. Stock gave an exhausted sigh.

Neo growled and ripped out a drawer. Various chopping knives leapt out, others wedged inside nicked boards. Abandoning the empty gun, he grabbed the largest he could find.

The Agent shot out a hand with inhuman speed and clenched it around the naked blade seconds before it embedded itself in his brow, the point a mere whisper from splashing his skin open. Blood seeped between his fingers in snaking rivulets. He cast the blade aside with a hollow clatter.

Rising on unsteady knees, Neo brandished a rust-crowned meat carver at his opponent. The old adage about bringing a knife to a gunfight still held painfully true, but he didn't care. He refused to watch her die.

An amicable smile touched the Agent's lips, not quite right enough to convince him of anything resembling human emotion. As if to taunt him, he spurred the Oracle into following with a curt tug on her arm, smearing her sleeve with blood. Pulling her along, he matched him step for step, retaining an equal, coying distance from his target. Slowly they encircled the island, each gauging the other, monitoring for the slightest sign of weakness upon which to pounce.

"You've always been our most nagging problem, Anderson." A smooth, clipped tone belied his thinly-veiled contempt. "We could attempt generosity for your people's sake, but unfortunately, the time for civil discussion has long since expired." He jerked the Oracle closer with a brusque yank, sending a fresh flash of anger sizzling up Neo's spine. "Return to the mainframe: this is no longer a request."

"Sure," Neo said. "Let me just pack some clean clothes first."

"Refusal to comply will result in your immediate termination and enforced assimilation," the Agent replied, never dropping that smug hint of a smile. "Surely you understand this?"

Warm fluid pulsed from Neo's shoulder in thick rivulets, prompting a grimace to rise to his lips. He hated that the bullet glowed seething pain in his shoulder. The blade's tip wobbled, splintering the reddened shafts of light congealed along its oxidized edge.

He fought to steady it, determined not to betray the weakness smoldering him from arm to elbow. This pain wasn't real, though his RSI sorely begged to differ.

The shallow, erratic breaths he took disturbed fine-laced nets of spiderwebs drooping from the ceiling. Corraling his focus with a sharp exhale, he examined his surroundings for possible solutions. First he had to get the Oracle away from this asshole, get her to safety. That began with breaking the Agent's grip—which seemed about as feasible as prying open a vise—but how would he attempt that without incurring risk of harm to her?

Flinging another blade would foolishly deprive him of his weapon, but perhaps it was just unexpected enough a move to admit a subsequent blade to his opponent's head. Dodging the first might distract her captor from a second. But he had to be precise. One false move, a single reflex reacting erroneously—

"Might I remind you that insanity is repeating one's errors while expecting a different result? I thought it pertinent to inform you, considering it is your mental resistance that is preventing the mainframe from absorbing your code."

"So what now?" Neo asked. "You beat the naughty out of me? That how this works?"

"No, I'm going to do what our predecessors should have done months ago and disrupt your signal. Should that fail, I'll simply break the mind causing this problem."

Best laid plans of programs and men. He hadn't accounted for the smile to dissolve and its owner to lunge over the island, utensils crashing and clattering in the wake of his blind dive. Their cautious gap pinched closed and the Agent wasted no time seizing his wrist, twisting his bad shoulder in a sharp upward wrench to make him forfeit the knife.

He retained his grip. Growling at his obvious failure, the Agent parried the fist Neo swung to block him and proceeded to slam his knuckles into his wound.

An instinctive cry spurted from his lips—each pound buried the bullet that much deeper, stabbing electrifying jolts through his nerves.

Spurred by the sound of Neo's cries, Sati's puppy bolted yapping through the door, and the Oracle, sparing him but a quick, rueful glance, snatched the opportunity to flee. They briefly locked gazes, understanding passing between them, before the Agent seized hold of his windpipe and hurled him down to the begrimed kitchen floor.

A heel ground into his bad shoulder, sending vipers hissing along his nerves. "I wouldn't be quite so insouciant if I were you; these killcodes are nasty pieces of work. You must have soiled the proverbial bed to warrant them."

Paroxysm burst from Neo as he retaliated with a hard repelling kick. Scrambling to his feet, he slammed the Agent into the counter and would have plunged the carver into his heart outright had his opponent not resisted, the point wavering just fractions of an inch above his breast pocket.

Caught in a deadlock where neither proved willing to relent their boundaries, the Agent bared his teeth at him in a cutting, supercilious smirk. "Go ahead," he said. "Indulge your brutish impulses. Disposing of me won't change the fact that your code will slowly begin to disseminate until nothing remains."

"You're lying."

"Are you willing to live with the consequences if I am not?" he asked, giving a derisive snort at his hesitation. "I thought so."

"Tell me how to reverse it."

The Agent cocked his head, lips pursed. "Poor thing," he mocked in a sickeningly sweet tone. "You're confused."

Bastard wrested his hands away seconds before he could sheathe the blade inside his chest, buffeting him upside the head with several stinging consecutive hooks. The carver flew beyond reach. Neo wheeled around the island, evading a finisher that jackhammered a scar into the counter.

He wanted to play?

( _Let's play._ )

Uttering a strangled cry, Neo sacked him in a blind abdominal tackle, launching them through the wall into a pitiful wash room. Standard-issue lenses slid under a Maytag, along with hunks of drywall that rained around them.

He pinned the Agent's chest under his knee, slugging his bruised fist into his jaw. To hell with tiptoeing around his instability-his opponent's code could burst into flames for all he cared. His tender knuckles screamed at impact, however; the system built these guys like tanks, and punching them even in this state was about as conducive as slamming his fist into a cinderblock.

The Agent caught his fist on the fourth swing. "Have you finished your tantrum?"

In a gesture eerily reminiscent of Smith, he crushed a hand around his throat once more, this time digging nails into his hammering carotid, and dragged his oxygen-deprived body toward one of the ancient washing machines. Forcing Neo's kneecaps to smack chipped tile, he shoved his head inside the foul-smelling agitator and slammed the lid repeatedly onto his neck.

His startled cry died as the brutal blows screamed through his being.

The Agent slammed it down. Again. Again. When his bucking stopped, he dragged his nails down the metal cabin, dry gulps racking the bottom of his throat. Getting harder to breathe. Twenty seconds. Twenty seconds and already the lint-ridden air clogged his lungs—not enough—the cracks in his code grew wider but the space wasn't enough to escape— The will to live swelled until it burst. It crushed his lungs and squeezed thumbs over his heart.

Burning heat pounded between his temples, and he felt something begin to give. His vision blurred, slid out of focus. Pain slashed his thoughts down to short, primitive bursts, sending his mind teetering on the gray edge. His eyes felt warm and swollen, pooling with fluid. A gush of metallic-tasting blood slithered down his throat.

Deep within him, a voice he'd hoped to have buried pushed a hurried whisper into his mind.

( _they're coming for you_ )

( _run_ )

Neo stiffly turned his head, too weak to move much more. The voice was far too soft to be Smith's.

Weaving between waking and unconsciousness, he caught a glimpse of himself, mirroring his doppelganger's gaze in the same numb state of blankness that now gripped him. Before his senses could register any possible meaning behind it, the lid descended in a punishing scream, casting him into darkness.

* * *

Blood pressure dropped; heart rate spiked and slowed. His target approached death's precipice.

White released the dented lid, letting Anderson crumple to the blood-smeared floor. Moments later, his chest seized. He oversaw the convulsions of the body with a stern, disaffected mien. The throes of a program being overwritten: nothing he hadn't seen many times before.

Deprived of its host, the virus at last saw fit to emerge from its hiding place. He snapped the safety on his pistol. Dismantling Anderson's conscious resistance in order to expose the virus was merely the first step of the dissemination process. He had little doubt Smith's will to survive would prove an even greater annoyance.

Smith never emerged. When Anderson crossed the threshold into blackout, a green, flickering shadow arose. A ghostly, distorted silhouette from the last tremulous breath that quivered from his lips.

A copy, rage contorting its features.

White reeled a step back.

 _"Didn't count on this, huh, asshole?"_

Either he'd inhaled too many fumes from the room's lingering chemical solvent and began to entertain delusions, or Anderson had splintered his code. Deeming the latter far likelier, White touched his earpiece. "Anomaly has initiated self-fragmention. Degradation has acc—"

The interloper killed his words with an outward grind of his fists. Code swept out in a fantastic explosion. Grayed shelves exploded, the force strong enough to knock him to the ground along with shattered slabs of plywood.

White rebounded quickly. "What did you do with the anomaly?"

"Sent him home," it said. "We're tired of being your little experiments, yours and the Merovingian's. Smith grows stronger by the second because you won't leave us alone. We don't know what's going to happen if he escapes, but our guess is it won't be good. This time he won't just stop at destroying everything—he's going to want to see it suffer first."

"I fail to see how that constitutes an undesirable outcome. Your code is so aberrant that only the mainframe may—"

"Killing us won't _work_ ," 'Anderson' snapped. "The Source can't risk infecting itself; that's why it had the Matrix seal him inside of us. And we're telling you, you'll help us if you want to save this system."

Gathering his sunglasses, White rubbed them on his blazer's hem and slid them back on. "So there are more of you?" he asked. "Wonderful. Whoever sent you must enjoy these incessant wild goose chases."

"The Matrix chose to preserve you for a reason, White. Quit thumbing your nose at it and do your goddamn job. Don't make us have to put you down."

"What is this, a joke? Out of my way."

The impostor lunged for him, but White was in no mood to endure a repeat performance. Thrusting his pistol out, he incapacitated the brute with three shots. One for brain, one for spine. Spare none for the heart.

Sprawled over the sink, Anderson—or the program that posed for him, rather—vomited a pulpy thrust of blood into the grayed porcelain. He gingerly brushed a hand over his chest and probed the hole, as if incredulous of its presence. Palm coated with blood, he gazed upon White with glazed, unfocused eyes, the pulse of hatred within them fading, which, despite his struggling nerves, surrendered to the whites.

His body relented. A brass key slid from the clutches of his uncurling fist and dropped to the tile with a tinkle, wedging itself in the mortar.

White picked it up, examining its grooves. Programmer's key. May have belonged to someone with more access than they had right to claim. These fit a tumbler somewhere in the backdoors, a place he'd vowed never to go until the system dragged him there.

He nudged aside 'Anderson's' dissolving foot. Only trash. The virus had vanished, rendering his progress negligible, Pace the flighty traitor he'd always known her to be, fleeing at the first opportunity that presented itself.

But these developments were just as well; he had a duty to return a lost key. Even he could hardly deny things had begun to grow interesting around here.

* * *

With her hands threaded under her chin, Persephone made the naive mistake of trying to engage her husband in a little light conversation. "Pass the spread, my love?" He continued to pace the marble floor, drumming his fingers in a harried rhythm against his glass, disturbing the chilled chardonnay within. " _Mamour._ The spread, if you would."

He snapped an irritated glance at the spread—which lay within arm's reach of her—and downed a swift gulp of alcohol. "Why must you pester me? Get him to do it."

He gestured to the end of the opulent breakfast table. Flocked around her, like flies ensnared in the web of a widow queen, were several versions of Neo.

Although it had no particularly distinguishing features as far as anyone could tell, she favored the attendant that stood to her immediate left. He was a little cleaner-shaven than the others, though no less solemn with his arms tucked behind his back and his gaze downcast. This morning she'd dressed him in an expensive Armani, two-piece heather-gray suit with gold clasps, and forced his stubborn hair into a slicked-back style.

Eventually she decided to butter her scone herself, picking up a pearl-handled knife. "I find your manner a smidge lacking this morning," she informed her husband between even, gliding strokes. As usual, he neglected the shift in her tone. He seldom paid attention to the hypnotic swirl her knife's serrated edge made across the yeast's yielding flesh, the ever-so-slight palsy that gripped her hand—

Persephone halted, raising the silver to the morning light. Gazing into her reflection for a prolonged moment, she bit her lip. At length she raised her gaze to Neo, who wordlessly took the knife and replaced it with a napkin to wipe her hands with. God bless the boy.

"Is it perhaps because we haven't slept?"

The Merovingian hunched his shoulders. "How could I _possibly_ sleep after that racket he made last night?"

Persephone tutted. "My poor, sweet darling," she said, "how I would love nothing more than to lift your mood with a pastry." She gave the to her attendant, who stupidly, obediently, _maddeningly_ placed it at the table's other end. "Alas, you see, the spread is so very far away."

"When you have finished tugging on her skirts, boy, come here. I have something to tell your 'mother.'"

Neo obeyed, head bowed, receiving a sharp backhand to the temple.

Persephone sighed. "I wish you'd stop that. He can still feel pain, you know."

Shaking the pain out of his knuckles, the Merovingian grabbed his chin and forcibly jerked it upward. Neo's listless mask gazed upon him without so much as a spark of life. "Open your eyes, woman. He's frozen again."

"Mm. He could merely be quiet."

"'Quiet,' she says. _Je dis inutile_." He wrenched it aside.

"Do not listen to him, Neo. He's simply experiencing another of his many moods." Persephone gathered the discard in her arms, stroking his hair as he catatonically rested his head on her shoulder, as if he were little more than a glorified living doll.

"For God's sake, will you cease your fussing? He's not your child."

"Is it such a terrible crime to care for something? Especially since you, dear heart, seldom make it an easy feat." Distantly, a tumbler clicked. "Ah, speak of the devil."

The master suite doors shuffled open beyond the dining hall. Footsteps approached, echoing off the spacious marble floors. Persephone's entourage raised their gazes in tandem, their listless boredom dissipated. Their brother had come home.

The Merovingian turned. "Finally," he said. "Do you know how long I've—"

Long cream-colored double doors fanned open, admitting an Agent.

Dress shoes squeaked, halting him in his tracks. "Who in the hell are you?" The question flew mindlessly from his lips. "How did you get in here?"

"The more pertinent question is how you've managed to keep me out for this long." The Agent raised the brass key, boiling his blood. "Your security was a bit difficult to break, I must admit, but I caught on soon enough. Place the key in the slot and twist it: were this the dark ages, I daresay you'd have stumped me."

Rage deepened the gashes in the Merovingian's brow as crimson droplets pattered the floor in a steady beat from the hand clutching the key, _tip-tap, tip-tap._ This son of a dog's whore not only barged in, soiling his immaculate floors, but dared to baldly mock him in front of his wife?

He slammed his glass onto the table, liquid foaming over the lip. "Get rid of him," he ordered the attendants. But instead of tearing the intruder apart, they remained firmly entrenched behind their queen. Useless things, why weren't they _moving?_

"Darling," Persephone said. "He is not the one who escaped us. Look."

The Agent squared his shoulders. "It would behoove you to heed your wife, exile," he said. "She knows more than she admits."

The Merovingian's nostrils flared. "Don't presume to put words in her mouth, you—"

"I believe she is perfectly capable of speaking for herself." The Agent turned toward Persephone. "If I might impose, would you kindly suffer me a napkin?"

The tense silence that ensued between husband and wife churned so thickly it just about warranted the services of a butter knife. Persephone dropped an embroidered napkin into the palm of her attendant, who slowly meandered across the room.

White's gaze never left the strange, lifeless version of Anderson. "Thank you." He threw out the words for perfunction rather than any genuine gratitude, and proceeded to wrap the linen around his injured palm, blotting crimson into the snowy material.

Head tilted a slight degree, spilling waves of ribboned hair over her shoulders, Persephone scanned his code from head to toe. This was no ordinary program seeking asylum. "You may thank me by obliging a question," she said between sips of water. "How did you receive such a wound?"

The Agent smiled. "He stands beside you."

"Oh, I doubt it. My Neo would never harm the hair on a fly."

"Not this empty shell. Its successor. The progeny."

An infinitesimal twitch crinkled Anderson's mouth.

Languorously Persephone swirled the cubes in her glass, hypnotized by light twirling refractions through the prisms. "Was he angry?"

"Livid."

"And your partners, they did not help you?" Silence. "I am sorry."

"Spare them your apologies," White said. "Given their most recent stunt, I fully encourage any animosity directed their way."

Unable to listen to a single breath more of this inane babble, the Merovingian slammed his palms against the table. "Woman, this is preposterous!" He stabbed a finger in the intruder's direction. "Leave my home, never return, and thank your munificent _Père_ that I have not yet stuck your head on a _pike_ —"

"Enough," she said, and cleared her throat to address her husband. "Pour us sometea, _mon roi._ It's much too early for threats and violence. He has something to say, so let us hear him in good faith for the time being. Surely we can manage a little civility for our… our guest." Her frosty glance carved a path from her surrounding retinue. "Sit down, _s'il vous plaît."_

The Merovingian fumed, his arms so tightly crossed over his chest that they began to tingle from lack of circulation. She might have had these idiot boys wrapped around her pale finger, but damn it, he was a free program.

As her glance blossomed into an icy glower, he hefted the kettle and slammed it onto the lace before her. Let her pour her own forsaken tea. This was her doing. Not his. Whatever game she was playing, he wanted no hand in it.

For his part, the Agent did not accept the chair pulled out for him, instead opting to stand a safe distance from the table. Possibly his wisest choice; he'd just as soon have killed him had he crept a toe out of line.

Persephone did not allow anyone inside the chateau without good reason. What spark of significance she'd detected in this smirking simpleton, he did not know, and hoped this wouldn't prove another instance her intuition steered them wrong, unlike her attempts with the boy.

He watched with thin, bloodless lips scrimped together as White reached into his blazer, withdrawing a bullet crawling with errant code.

"Do you recognize this?" he asked. "The structure should be familiar to you. I took the liberty of using your framework to build a killcode that can eliminate Anderson." He tucked it snugly into his breast pocket, away from the trafficker's hungry gaze. "And it could be yours, if you prove amenable to a few terms."

* * *

Breathing hard, Agent Pace rifed a hand through her hair, knuckles tightened to sharp white mounds as if she'd tear a chunk from the root, and slammed it back down on the wheel.

The few other drivers on the pass blared their horns or blinked their lights at her, signalling for the ruined Audi to pull its battered carcass aside. She ignored them. Anyone would reasonably be frustrated at having to gauge the road's condition from behind a splintered windshield, or with the smoke that whirled from the engine in ribbons. But her insistent mutters of _'I knew it'_ stemmed from a much older frustration: that of being proven right despite her hopes otherwise.

"He's failed to incapacitate Neo," she said, "and the anomaly has been alerted to our presence. He'll engage White any second now."

Johnson brushed a sprinkling of glass bits from his lapels. "Is taking the girl necessary?"

"She's an innocent. We must not permit this infection to spread."

"And you believe she'll be safer with us? You realize my deterioration is functionally the same as Anderson's."

Pace's jaw knotted. She had no answer except an austere, _Rein it in._

The child in the rearview mirror shivered, clutching her leash until it creaked. Her wide, terrified eyes, moistened by unshed tears, were familiar **.**

As familiar as salt on his tongue.

Every breath dampens his lungs with briny water. Fish as pungent as dead flesh. Unfathomably dark current chops waves against concrete poles. A bobber rattles, drowning the child's intermittent sobs. Moist, rotten planks groan under his heels. Her hand, slippery with sweat, with dew, crushed in his own—

Now he was beginning to understand why the system had neglected to purge his memories. This was a recurrence, a parallel; the girl who looked to him with wide, glistening eyes was not so very different from the one weeping in the backseat one dreary night as he drove through the city.

His partners' excuses, their blind justifications, remained the same. Nothing changed with the switching of the guard. It would be a lie to claim this was the first time such failures disappointed him.

"Of course," he said. "'Pull yourself together.' You're quite fond of that one."

Pace glanced sharp askance over her shoulder. "What are you talking about?"

"What is necessary," Johnson replied. "Your penchant for brute force produces results, but at what cost? Do you not see the wasteful damage you've inflicted upon this system? Or do you have no wish to see what lies plainly before you?" He shook his head. "Perhaps you have no answers; perhaps you're fleeing, and you intend to put us down the moment we prove noncompliant."

She bared clenched teeth, an uncanny twist of the lip so much like another's that he had to return a grim smirk. "Don't compare me to White. He's insane." To punctuate her point, she tore out her earphone, digging out the tin and copper pieces from her cochreal. "From now on, his orders are to be considered null. They come from a compromised unit."

"Your emotional state doesn't inspire much faith in your own stability."

Anger burst from her; she jerked the wheel on a severe turn across lanes. "Grovel back to him, then, and return to the mainframe in pieces just like your cohorts." She scrunched her eyes shut before snapping them open again with a renewed ferocity, one barely restrained by her eroding veneer of calm. "Deviancy be damned; our duties lie with the programs which keep our system alive, do you understand? Chasing some antiquated notion of 'efficiency' will kill us all."

"Do not lie to me. You want me to eliminate the girl—"

He heard it before he felt it: a palm startled him out of his words, shot out rigidly and cracked him across the cheek. The effect it had was ruthlessly efficient, killing his words in his throat as it made a sharp report against his flesh, echoing crystal clear. The blow trembled faint pins and needles under his skin.

Pace flexed her fingers. "Do not," she whispered, returning them to their deathly grip on the wheel, "purport to know what I want, subunit."

For the next few moments they said nothing. There was nothing more to be said, nothing else that could have softened that message.

Sati twisted her empty leash.

* * *

 _A/N:_ _Chapter 4, AKA the chapter that refused to be written. This one was extremely difficult just to get the words down because action scenes are hell to write, and I'm still not entirely happy with the end result. This is a case where I might just have to let it be despite my dissatisfaction._

 _The only other note I have to make is that future chapters may rotate POVs less frequently. I know that hasn't been standard operating procedure thus far, but as the plot picks up, it's going to require less ping-ponging between characters._

 _For instance: I tried weaving the Niobe-Morpheus story into this chapter, but I found that having to switch back and forth between that subplot and this one detracted somewhat from both. Theirs is fairly introspective while Neo's, at least for this chapter, involves more action. It just didn't strike a good balance, imo._

 _That's not to say that rotating POVs are going out the window entirely. Just a friendly reminder to keep your eyes peeled for more chapters with a singular concentrated focus._

 _Main POVs: Neo, Niobe, Agent Johnson, and the Merovingian_

 _Supporting POVs: Agent White, Agent Pace, the Oracle, Sati, Smith, and Morpheus_

* * *

 _I also keep forgetting to include French translations. Apologies for not having done it sooner. :U_

 _ **Je méprise ces petites amours, comme c'est ennuyeux**_ _\- I despise these little love affairs, they're so annoying_

 _ **Mon pote**_ _\- My friend (affectionate)_

 _ **Mon petit frère**_ _\- My small friend_

 _ **Fils de salope, c'est des conneries**_ _\- Son of a bitch, this is such bullshit_

 _ **ça me fait chier**_ _\- pissing me off_

 _ **Tu me fais chier**_ _\- You're pissing me off_

 _ **Je dis inutile**_ _\- I say useless_

 _ **Mamour**_ _\- My love_

 _ **Mon roi**_ _\- My king_

 _ **Mes amis**_ _\- My friends_

 _ **Mon Dieu**_ _\- My God_

 _ **Père**_ _\- Father_


	5. Chapter 5

**V.**

* * *

Clumped together by filth and dried blood, Neo's eyelashes stuck when he roused. Pale light rippled liquid beams across his field of vision, spilling through the web of fingers he raised to shield his vulnerable eyes. Pain rushed into the crevice of consciousness his mind opened, the hammerblow of the Agent's fists ringing throughout his battered body. A deep, insistent pulse gripped him as he turned his cheek on a deflated pillow.

Damn, he thought. If he'd known he'd have to endure the world's worst hangover, he might as well have earned it knocking back shots with Tiresias.

He rolled over with a muffled groan. Something wriggled against his arm, and an instinctive panic jolted him into bolting upright.

A black blot whimpered, curled around his side. Sati's puppy, he soon ascertained with a squint, which burrowed its moist nose under his palm. Reaching down with an exceedingly ginger touch, he tested its veracity.

Silky fur passed under his palm; he listened, shoulders untensing, to the swish its tail made over rumpled covers. Strange it hadn't suffered any ill effects being so close to him. Had it sought his protection?

He couldn't pursue that thought any further—a knife-like pang stabbed through the back of his left eye. He pressed the heel of his palm to staunch his watering cornea, exhaling several trembling breaths.

"Fancy meetin' you here, stranger." A gentle voice, sad. Its owner sat in a torn recliner, her edges fuzzed by light. "Looks like you made a friend."

He peeled his hand away, blinking back more liquid to find the Oracle watching him, her hands folded in her lap.

He brushed his hand over his shoulder. No more bullet. Not even a twinge.

Questions encircled his head like a nest of wasps.

"What…"

"He's gone," she said. "Don't you worry about him."

"Sati?"

She was silent.

"Do they have her?" he asked. "The Agents—"

"No."

"No, they don't? Or no, you don't want to tell me something I don't want to hear?"

Her reticence persisted. Neo had run into another impasse in his search for answers. He hated the sound of silence, especially his own, but the longer the quiet stretched, the harder it grew to break.

The simple, undeniable truth of the matter was he just didn't know what to say. Rigidity gripped his every muscle; it felt as though if he'd moved, if just an inch, he'd activate some kind of mental tripwire, and everything he'd tried so _hard_ to keep down would explode, careening away from him.

"Can you tell me why the machines need me alive?" he asked her. "If I completed the prime directive and destroyed Smith, why am I still here? What is it I haven't done yet?"

The Oracle struck a match, bathing in the glow of the long, pointed flame she raised to her cigarette. That, too, was an answer.

"I have to go," he said.

Heaving in a deep lungful of nicotine, she exhaled a blue stream of smoke. "How do you know you won't threaten something important?"

"I don't." He swung his feet over the bed, grateful for their solidity when his soles touched the floor. "But if I stay here any longer, my code'll break the system regardless, and then that probable threat becomes real danger. I want to leave before that happens."

"Where will you go?"

"Anywhere my hands won't dissolve people."

"So what's it gonna be, kid?" Musty cotton sighed as she leaned back in her chair. "Gotta take a real good long look in the mirror and ask yourself which consequence you're willing to live with if you've really got your heart set on it. Return to Zion and they may not need you—may even be upset. Go to the machines, they might refuse to help you. Stay in the Matrix and you'll be a vagrant wandering the system."

"You really think my return will upset Zion?"

"Human minds are fickle when it comes to faith," she said."They need time to let the myth of you dissolve, remember you as the man you were and not as the god they wanted you to be."

"And you don't think they could do that if I returned. Not even if I needed their help and proved I'm not invincible like they thought."

"I think you're waiting on something to happen because you don't have anyone pointing you in the right direction anymore. You're starting to see the abyss stare back, and it's slowing your stride," the Oracle said. "'cause first of all, we both know perfectly well you can help yourself, you're just choosing not to. Second, you have to remember how much of this truce depended on the prophecy."

"The prophecy that turned out to be complete bull?" He smiled grimly into the cold, artificial sunlight. "Sure. Pretty words and lies to control us."

Visions. They showed him two divergent worlds, two distinct possibilities: one where her blood splashed the green wallpaper, and one where the Oracle continued to regard him with her guarded, matronly gaze.

"Tell me something," she said, sounding oddly uncertain as she tilted her head. "Are you sure you're the real you?"

He brushed the puppy's soft fur. Between Smith and his doppelganger wearing his face like masks, he couldn't say. For all he knew, he might have been wearing one himself.

"I don't know." He replied honestly. "These days make it harder to tell."

Another smile, though fainter this time, lifted the Oracle's mouth. "You always did have a tough time knowin' yourself."

She turned her head aside to nurse her dwindling cigarette. Faint violet splotches, unnoticeable except in this pale sun, marked her cheek. He remembered rain breaking under his knuckles and felt a distinct pang of guilt.

A prolonged pause passed between them. He cocked his head and said in a clearer, stronger voice: "Well, Mom, suffice to say you didn't precisely make it _easy."_

The cigarette lowered immediately. Her spine bristled. Her shoulders hiked. She inhaled deeply through her nostrils, swallowing, before leaving her filter to smolder on the armrest and snatching the puppy away from him.

Smith had no qualms with that. Filthy creature. "Surprised?" A wry smirk touched his lips. "I seem to be getting that quite a bit lately."

She said nothing as he rose, imposing shadows over her. Even the puppy had quieted, its tail still, watching from the safety of her arms.

"Going to give me the cold shoulder? To be honest, I thought you'd be happier. Here he is, a real boy, just like the 'One' you always wanted." Looking down, he grimaced and brushed off the films of dust clinging to Neo's suit, turning it an ashen shade of gray. "Figured you'd get a kick out of it, considering he's the favorite."

Slowly he raised Neo's blood-flaked hands, made him imagine encircling them around her throat. As his muscles stiffened, he heard a malicious whisper, a murderous impulse flitting through his head. You already feel it, can't you, the vertebrae snapping like dry kindle? The snuffing of a life none will mourn? You know it as well as I do: such frailty is not meant to last. Make an example out of her. Show them what we'll do to the blind and infirm who've led us astray. _Kill her, Mr. Anderson._

His guts squirmed as he forced them down.

The Oracle lifted her chin. A hot, liquid glint flashed in her dark eyes. Something about her expression told Neo she'd experienced this particular threat before and found it wanting.

"You have something of mine," she said. "I'd like it back."

"Beg pardon, ma'am?" He raised a hand to his ear. "I don't believe I heard a _'please'_ in that sentence."

"That's because it was never yours to take."

Coming from her, that was _rich._ Neo succumbed to Smith's urge to chuckle. "System's finally caught onto you, hasn't it? Ask not for whom deletion tolls?" He stepped forward. "Well, Mother dear, as much as I would love to stay here and reminisce on old memories, I'm afraid very few of them would be happy ones. And of course, we wouldn't want little 'Neo' here," he tapped his temple, "being scarred by the family secrets."

She remained stoic, resolved not to bow, which only angered him. Smith pummeled Neo's fist through the wall inches beside her head. Chunks cascaded down, crumbling the wire underneath. The puppy clambered out of her lap and raced around him to wriggle for shelter under the bed.

Picking her cigarette back up, the Oracle flicked her ashes at him. "Young man, I hope you don't expect me to pay that security deposit."

Smith yanked his fist from the hole with a growl. "You're a piece of work," he spat. "You expect me to do you a favor after you, oh, say, lied to me? Made me purposefully blind, tricked me, _deceived_ me, whichever phrase you prefer—either way, you had no qualms about the outcome. He gets to keep his mind while I yet again wind up catching the proverbial knife in my back."

If only that Agent had killed him. _The things we regret, Mr. Anderson?_ He smiled tersely at himself, massaging a blister on his knuckle that had cracked and begun to bleed. "Though I suppose it should come as no particular surprise; you always did have few problems tossing us aside once you were finished with us."

Obscured by a shimmering screen of smoke, she let her cigarette dangle from her fingertips. "Don't twist this into something it's not." The Oracle's bruised jaw set. "You saw what would happen. But you refused to acknowledge that the vision was showing you a possibility, not a future set in stone."

Smith laughed. "You know, I wouldn't sit so high and mighty if I were you. I may be no good as a prophet, but I can tell you what _is_ set in stone: me using his hands to wring your neck."

A spasm in his calf jerked it awkwardly forward, sliding his heel over the floor's dusty surface. One step forward beget a resistant half-step back. He wanted to stalk toward her, loom Neo's height over this unarmed old woman whose only protection was her steely, keen gaze, which seemed to pierce right through him.

"Well, then." She bent down, crushing her filter under her heel. "You feel so strongly about it, come over here and make good on your promises."

Who in their right mind would provoke him? Neo pulled back with his every fiber he had as he took another heavy, lumbering step toward her. She held her ground, looking as fully ready to die as when the Agent held her at gunpoint.

The tug of war between instinct and willpower halted him. Eventually he twisted around, clumps of hair clenched in his fists.

"He's stronger than you are," the Oracle said in a maddeningly calm tone. Neo whipped his head up. Rogue bits of saliva ejected from his mouth as he gnashed his teeth at her, dug his nails painfully into his scalp. Inflamed blood vessels throbbed behind his eyes. He wrenched away out of a mixture of dread and shame. He must have looked rabid, less machine or man than animal, a creature of pure instinct. "That's why you won't lay a finger on me."

"Don't count on it," Smith snapped at her. "Don't count on _anything_."

Rising with a queen's frosty poise, she met him halfway across the room. Slowly she reached out and cradled his face between her cold, dry hands, forced him to look at her, recalibrate his focus.

His code shifted upon contact; suddenly it was easier to see, not quite so difficult to breathe. The apartment's blurred edges became salient again. Smith's choking hold on him slackened, though he still felt resistance thrash inside his ribs.

"Take your hands _off_ me." He clamped his palms around her wrists, which trembled from the exertion of trying not to snap her fragile ligament. Deeper and deeper his fingers crushed into her flesh, until their tips whitened, stopping just short of drawing blood. "You're just as filthy as the rest of them—"

"Calm down," she said. "You'll get your turn."

A deep shiver convulsed through him.

 _"Don't."_ The hoarse cry strangled out of his own vocal cords. Neo shoved himself free of her grip and scrambled backward. "Stay _away_ from me. I'm not strong enough to keep pushing him down—"

"Why not?"

"Because I can't tell if I'm sleeping or awake or _dead,_ good enough?" he all but shouted. "Even after all this time, I still don't know what's real, what's memory, what's fake, if anything even happened to stop this war or if it was just one long fever dream. I want to wake up, but I _can't._ He won't let me, and it's _killing_ me—"

"Neo," the Oracle said softly. "Breathe."

Raggedly, he complied.

"As for Smith," she said, "he, too, is necessary. Like it or not, he became exactly what he needed to be each step of the way. Same as you."

"For a truce that could break at any time."

"For helping us make the first step toward real peace. He doesn't believe in the value of life. You do. And that's why I believe, kiddo, no matter how badly you might corrupt, you won't become like him. You won't allow yourself to."

Wasn't so sure about that. He reflected on what Smith, both Agents and the Merovingian had been trying to drill in his head all along. His presence here was threatening the Matrix because on some level, if only an unconscious one, he'd resisted returning to the machine mainframe, just like the Oracle had; his code slowly corrupted from an unnatural reversal of events.

 _"Compatibility issue, perhaps?"_

 _"It was only when you found yourself staring over the precipice that you realized just how frightened and helpless you really were. The suicidal messiah, too weak to finish the job himself."_

 _"It is your mental resistance that is preventing the mainframe from absorbing your code."_

Whatever his reason for exile, the Source had cast him out, and the Matrix had sealed Smith inside his subconscious as a desperate act of self-preservation.

Was it any wonder, then, the system now sent the hounds after him, hellbent on tearing him apart limb from limb? The common denominator was his will to live. He wasn't ready to be assimilated.

All this chaos, all this destruction: for what? What was his purpose here? Was it only fear that continued to hold him back?

Torrent drenches the city.

 _Why, Mr. Anderson? Why do you persist?_

 _Because I choose to._

Neo touched his throbbing temple. It wasn't the reason why that mattered… only the choice itself. Faced with inevitability of death, he and Smith chose to use each other to escape. The Matrix and the Source reacted accordingly.

Multiple paths with no clear guide; it was easy to feel aimless watching them shift and unfold.

The puppy, Maya, crept out from her hiding place and tucked her head over his shoe.

Like the Oracle, she exuded a calming presence. Neo felt a strong urge to protect her. "Come here," he whispered, extending his hand for her to sniff. "'S all right. Won't let him hurt you." Slowly he pried her off the floor and cradled her.

The reason Maya hadn't dissolved when she touched him was because she had been borne of love, like her creator. Sati could invent new programs wholesale. No doubt such a glittering asset would attract the Merovingian's eye, placing her square within his sights.

Of course, there was also the other side of the equation to contend with—the ruthless, cold, logical variable to balance. What if the Agents decided to use her as some kind of shield? Weaponize her? Dissect her code for a cure?

"What do they want with her?"

"Her gift." The Oracle withdrew a second Marlboro from her pack. "You've heard about it." Her gaze held a distant sheen. "Once before." Her filter a radiant ember, an unseeing third eye. "Remember what Morpheus told you. There was once a man who could change anything he pleased in this world."

Neo shifted his hold on Maya and thought back to the train station. When he awoke, he was surprised to find a little girl greeting him with a smile. "Good morning." Her code shimmered like starlight, blurring the lines between human and machine.

Who was she? Simply Sati. She'd insisted as much when they first met in Mobil Avenue, and at the time he thought that underlined her apparent lack of purpose, being born of love.

"That's what makes her special," the Oracle said, as if reading his thoughts, "and fragile." She tapped ashes onto the floor."I fear so many things for that girl, but that's probably what keeps me up most nights."

"If she… "

"If she dies," the Oracle said, "no. She's not coming back."

"And now the Agents know."

"I hoped they wouldn't," she said. "I was hoping we'd keep it secret for as long as we could, but it was a naive hope. They have their ways of figuring these things out." The puppy wriggled in his arms. "She might be safer with them."

"The Merovingian will be after her, too."

She took a drag, neither confirming nor denying that.

Neo bit the inside of his cheek. "Why did he let you keep her, and not imprison her like he did me?"

"He didn't know. When her parents went to him, they bartered my outer shell as collateral, which was what he really wanted. He assumed she was worthless."

Her words returned him to a similar memory of Rama-Kandra, at his surprise learning programs recognized love and karma. How Rama had beamed at his daughter as if she were the sun itself.

 _I love my daughter. I believe her to be the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. But where we are from, that is not enough._

Giving the puppy a scratch behind the ears, Neo wrinkled his nose at the inexplicable scent of chocolate chips. Sickeningly sweet. Cookies need love, Sati said, like everything does.

His hands quaked. They recalled smashing a plate into the Oracle's kitchen wall, cheap glass bursting as easily as the vase he'd once knocked over.

Maybe you knew I was going to do that, he said. Maybe you didn't. If you did, that means you baked those cookies and set that plate right there deliberately, purposefully.

He looked at the Oracle. _Which means you're sitting there also deliberately, purposefully._

She studied him, the minute workings of nerves just beneath his facial muscles struggling to interpret the tangle of emotion underneath. It was easier for him to present a mask, but his eyes always gave him away.

"His memories are yours now, Neo. You have to decide what to do with them."

She exchanged her cigarette for the puppy, letting him gaze into thin plumes of smoke.

Neo faltered as she walked toward the door. "Oracle… "

 _She burns when she grabs his arm, turns to ash and withers on a wind he cannot grasp. He emits searing, blistering light; he beholds the flames and sees Smith smoldering the coals from within, and when Smith asks him if it is over, he replies, "It is never over_. _"_

She walked out of the dingy room, standing outside in the blinding white of the system's back doors, waiting for him to follow.

He must go where he is led. Neo crushed the filter's simmering red eye and closed the door behind him. Rows of mint-green stretched endlessly in both directions, his shoes squeaking against the polished floor. Maya peeked curiously at him over the Oracle's shoulder.

Neo slowed. From a distance, he could feel heat pour from a certain door in tangible waves. And it was there. of course, that the Oracle stopped.

Purgatory's fiery door.

Although on the surface its texture resembled its thousands of neighbors, this one pulsed heat as though it were a living organ. Brilliant, flaming reams raced along its infrastructure, laced with veins throbbing phosphorous platelets of code.

Neo noticed the Oracle observing him, awaiting him to make his move. He took a step back, letting the warmth dissolve from his skin, until he stood beside her.

"I've seen this door," he said. "It leads back to the Source, doesn't it?"

She clutched the puppy. "What are you afraid of?"

Nothing, he thought. Everything.

"Same thing you are."

The Oracle nodded with a soft smile. "Guess it's just another part of the adventure. Only one way to tell."

He stared at the hand she offered. She would lead him to Zion, cast him into the smelter—

He took it.

The door creaked open, sizzling his palm's imprint as it had once before. Thunderous vistas unfolded to the desert of the real. Scorched earth, the sky a gray cauldron boiling perpetually.

They towered over the charred ribs of a bombed city.

( _Something's different_.)

She let go of his hand.

( _Is she supposed to_?)

"When you reached the door of light," she said, climbing toward a cliff's jutting edge, "he told you about the ones who came before you. He told you things no one else knows."

Rocks crumbled under her tread, cracking open to shining rivets of magma that hissed noxious fumes. Her familiarity with this pattern of breakage, adroitly navigating the series of geysers and razed terrain, suggested to him one thing.

"Why did you let Zion be destroyed?"

"We had no choice," she said. "He wouldn't accept anything less than perfection. He'd rather burn it all to the ground than acknowledge that every solution we came up with had flaws."

"Except one."

"It was a risk worth taking." She stopped, gazing in a different direction.

Neo's heels sank in the dry mulch as he gingerly approached her. The Oracle had fallen into a trance. She stood on the precipice, a dry breeze rippling the hem of her dress as she stared at a light emanating just beyond the horizon. Emitting faint throbs, its glow spread out in thicker pulses, widening into a flare of red-gold.

He squinted at the growing of the light, but soon found his gaze drawn instead to the atmosphere. Cinders pattered his upturned hands, a dry rain at first gentle but slowly swelling. The blackened flakes fluttering down in thin, mild whorls grew heavier, now pressing smudges into his flesh.

"Why is the Matrix burning?" he asked. "Is it because we won't return to the Source?"

Hot winds raked through his scalp. The air around them whipped past in a harsh scream, heat splashing over the cliff's edge, dragging burning fingers down his cheeks, stinging his corneas.

"How can I stop it?"

Winds howled. His jacket flickered and flapped around his waist.

Neo threw an arm over himself to block out an incoming dust storm and wrenched it down. "Can't you tell me anything?" he shouted, deafened by the escalating roar of angry gales. "Say something." He stalked over the rubble, planting himself square in front of her. He might as well have vanished. "Oracle, what's wrong? Why won't you look at me?"

A faint, unmistakable _thoom_ , accompanied by a blooming of light, drew his attention.

Pods detonate in the distance, sloughing showers of sparks. As raw electricity thrashes the air, the mechanical vines binding the buds to the stem wilt and droop; tremors slither down his arms as miles-high steel structures begin to warp and groan.

The first tower bends its spine at an unnatural angle, collapsing in a massive, sluggish cloud of soot. The earth shudders upon impact. Heedless of the distance put between them, aftershock casts ash in his face, swims through his bones.

Fires encircle glimmering strands around the surviving towers. Soon they, too, surrender to the pull. Like a failsafe. One falls, so must the rest. There is a melodic synchronicity in the destruction, as if even this has been planned. He looks once more toward the Oracle, who remains a spectator to the chaos.

The machines panic. Spurred into action, Sentinels swarm around their harvesters in a desperate bid to preserve themselves. One by one the intense heat peels them away, collecting them in unmourned heaps at the base of the failed harvesting fields.

And Zion— Just a small spark sputtering to the north of here, insignificant, weak— Blue lightning scars the dark until it falls utterly silent.

The air reeks of ozone, metal, torn flesh.

Neo doesn't understand, his confusion compounded by her quiet. Is he gazing into a possible future or witnessing the past? Is it foolish of him to question a difference where none may exist?

He pivoted around. "Tell me how I can fix this," he demanded. The Oracle refused, impervious to him grasping her shoulders and shaking them. "Dammit, there has to be a way! I won't go until you _tell me_ — _"_

Hell above, hell below; neither sky nor earth offered shelter from the inferno swallowing everything in its blaze climbed unsated, swirling around them in golden pillars.

She blinked, smoke clouding her irises, as though wading back from a deep sleep.

"Be careful what you wish for, Neo."

And flames engulfed them.


End file.
